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THE 



BIRTH OF JESUS. 



BY 

Rev. henry A? MILES, D. D. 



>$5 



AUTHOR OP " ORIGIN AND TRANSMISSION OP THE GOSPELS, '' " TRACES OP 
PICTURE-WRITING IN THE BIBLE." 



*' Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after 
the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." 
St. Paul to the Colossians ii. 8 




BOSTON: 
LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, AND COMPANY. 

381 Washington Street. 

1878. 



Copyright, 1877, 
Br LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & CO. 




RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. Introduction 5 

II. The Problem 19 

III. The Probable Facts .... 34 

IV. The Shepherds and the Magi . . 55 
V. After Theories 72 

VI. The Fight 95 

VII. The Fathers ... . 125 

VIII. Patristic Reasoning .... 139 

IX. The Apostles* Creed .... 154 

X. Mariolatrt . . . . . .166 

XL Conclusion 194 



THE BIETH OF JESUS. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTEODUCTION. 

TT is the object of this book to examine those 
parts of the gospel narratives which relate 
to the birth of Jesus, in order to understand, if 
possible, what they intended to record. 

A few Avords may explain the motives that 
lead to this investigation, and the spirit in which 
it is conducted. 

If there be in the English language a mono- 
graph on this subject, it is not known to the 
writer of this book. Various commentaries on 
the Gospels offer brief explanations ; but, per- 
haps, no critical reader has looked into them 
without disappointment. To discuss this point 
fully in such works would require dispropor- 
tionate space, and it is generally dismissed in a 
few words. 



6 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

The inquirer may next turn to Treatises on the 
Evidences of Christianity. In modern works of 
this kind the miraculous birth of Jesus is fre- 
quently not even alluded to. Scholars knov^ 
what a prominent place this point held a few 
hundred years ago. The recent silence betrays 
doubts, and still further baffles the inquirer. 

He finds a like silence on this subject in 
modern creeds. The ninth chapter of this book 
will describe the steps of the formation, in the 
fourth century, of what is commonly called The 
Apostles' Creed, Subsequent creeds often fol- 
lowed the style of that symbol of faith. But a 
marked change in their contents is now seen in 
nearly all Protestant creeds. The old clauses 
relating to the supernatural birth of Jesus are 
now omitted. The Christian consciousness of 
our age recognizes the difficulties and doubts 
connected with this subject, and makes conces- 
sion to them. With good sense and propriety 
creeds are now usually limited to the expression, 
in some form, of a belief that Jesus was a divine 
manifestation in the flesh. Details are left to 
individual judgments, which, if they have ever 
carefully considered this subject, have doubtless 
reached diverse conclusions. 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

Two opposite poles of thought are sufRciently 
obvious. On the one hand is the lately pro- 
claimed, but long believed, dogma of the '' Im- 
maculate Conception,'" which affirms that the 
Virgin Mary gave birth to God by the power of 
the Holy Ghost, without human intervention. 
On the other hand, to many minds there seems 
mingled with the records of the birth of Jesus 
stich a mass of incredible interpretations that it 
has none of the aspects of a real event. The 
whole history is pushed aside with much the 
same feeling as is the fable of the birth of Mi- 
nerva from the brain of Jupiter. 

Between these extremes the minds of thought- 
ful teachers of religion often waver. Once in 
each year they read from the sacred desk the 
stories of the birth of Jesus, and can feel, as 
they think, a sincere faith in them. They are 
sustained by the hallowed memories that cluster 
around that season in which Jesus '' came to 
visit us in great humility," and which, amid all 
the kindly feelings and beautiful customs of 
Christmas, draw every one into a believing mood. 
But even then, as we suppose, most ministers 
would prefer not to be questioned closely as to 
what the traditions relating to the first Christmas 
really mean. 



8 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

We know that they would generally affirm 
that they believe exactly what the record says. 
But what the record says is still an open ques- 
tion ; and if they reply that they take it in its 
obvious and literal sense, we suspect that few 
believe this with the same assured faith with 
which they believe other things. 

Propositions of which we say that we believe 
them all equally, may have a very different hold 
upon the mind. There are other witnesses in 
the case than our affirmations. Probably no 
one reads ordinarily the story of the birth of 
Jesus in the same tone of voice with which he 
reads the Beatitudes. It seems impossible that 
these chapters should stand alike in our spir- 
itual conviction. The preacher knows there are 
thoughtful and devout men among his hearers 
who look upon the account of that birth with 
bewildered and suspended minds. He would 
be glad to come into a truer relation to them ; 
and they would be glad to see this subject in 
lights which would permit an untroubled belief. 

Between a literal acceptance of the stories con- 
nected with our Lord's birth, and a rejection of 
them all as fables, critical literature has not yet 
furnished an accredited middle ground. Happily 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

we are far removed from the ribald skepticism of 
the Deistical writers of the last century. Noth- 
ing is more reassuring than the freedom from 
sneering assaults from unbelievers, and the manly 
confidence in the truth among the friends of a 
sound Biblical criticism. Even those who shrink 
from a departure from traditional interpretations 
have little of the feeling of the Buddhist, who, 
regarding the destruction of any life as a sin, 
and seeing millions of animalculse in a drop of 
water, at once destroyed the microscope that 
had made the unwelcome revelation. 

Should a visitor from some other planet see 
in Roman Catholic countries the infant Jesus in 
his mother's arms, painted in millions of pictures, 
in churches, and on shrines and altars, and should 
he observe that prayers are offered to these a 
thousand fold more frequently than to any one 
else, would he not naturally conclude that the 
Christian's God is an infant, and that Christian 
adoration consists in the worship of a child ? 

How great would be his astonishment if he 
should contrast all this with the worship enjoined 
by Jesus, and with the prayers that have come 
down to us from the first century of the church. 

It might be a long time before he could under- 



10 ' THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

stand from ^vliat tone of mind arose tiiis ascrip- 
tion of the godhead to a child. But his studies 
in history would at length suggest the true ex- 
planation. He would see that it was the influ- 
ence of pagan Uterature which first invested that 
child with supernatural associations. 

In the heathen mythologies it was believed 
that the gods often took human form. When 
in the fourth century a thin Christian varnish 
was given to the ancient paganism, parallelisms 
were eagerly sought between Jupiter and his 
offspring, and Jehovah and the Son of God. The 
life of Jesus was then written, once in Greek by 
lines taken entirely from Homer, and once in 
Latin by lines taken entirely from Virgil. These 
'• Centons," as they were called, were famous 
books in their day. They are here referred to 
only as one token among numberless others of 
the drift of thought in the epoch when they ap- 
peared. That epoch originated the worship of a 
child, and made that child God. 

At the Protestant Reformation the adoration 
of an infant was abandoned by the Reformers; 
but the theology on which that adoration rested 
was retained. This theology teaches that this 
infant, even before his birth, was the Almighty 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

God. " God of God " was laid in the manger of 
Bethlehem, and was carried in his mother's arms. 
Some think the Roman Catholic is more consist- 
ent with this theology than the Protestant. It 
seems strange that so little has been done to re- 
form the theology on which this idolatry was 
engrafted. Why should we lay at the vestibule 
of Christianity an old heathen dogma, which, 
if made as prominent as formerly, would repel 
thousands, and is now repelling many, since it 
is in conflict with the criticism and thought of 
this age ? 

What if the records of the birth of Jesus have 
been misunderstood for hundreds of years ? What 
if false opinions on this point have long been 
handed down from father to son ? Do we not 
know that this has happened with many other 
dogmas? The more enlightened faith of our 
day protests against views of the Atonemeiit^ of 
Total Depravity^ of Future Punishment^ and of 
Infant Damnation^ which have been believed for 
ages. 

The old complaint that theology has not 
shared the progress of other sciences is at length 
losing its pertinency. Truth, which is in itself 
''the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," will 



12 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

necessarily assume different aspects according to 
the condition of our mental eyes. It would be 
eyidence of imbecility or insanity to ask us to 
hold the astronomical views adopted before tele- 
scopes were invented. 

''The whole scheme of Scripture," says one of 
the profoundest thinkers, "is not yet understood; 
and, if it ever comes to be understood, it must 
be in the same way as natural knowledge is come 
at ; by the continuance and progress of learning 
and of liberty, and hj particular persons attend- 
ing to, comparing and pursuing intimations scat- 
tered up and down it, which are overlooked and 
disregarded by the generality of the world. Nor 
is it at all incredible that a book which has been so 
long in the possession of mankind should contain 
many truths as yet undiscovered." ^ 

This is a sufficient answer to the sophistry in 
one of Lord Macaulay's Essays.^ He contends 
that theology ''is not a progressive science." A 
divine revelation makes all minds equal. A 
Newton, or a Locke, he says, can see no further 
than a Blackfoot Indian. This must be on the 
supposition that revelation is the only factor in 

1 Bishop Butler. 

2 See Macanlay's Review of Ranke's History of the Popes, 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

the case. Surely, our ability to comprehend 
revelation, to free it from traditional misrepre- 
sentations, and to clear our mental eye, is an- 
other factor. This necessitates a continued re- 
adjustment of old conclusions. The great his- 
torian was here advancing one of the brilliant 
paradoxes which at times fascinated his pen. 

The limits of the change of opinion now advo- 
cated should be defined as well as its scope. 

In undertaking to show that in the New Testa- 
ment and the Primitive Church we are taught 
that Jesus was born in a natural generation, and 
was the son of Joseph as well as of Mary, nothing 
is said that is necessarily adverse to Arian or 
Trinitarian views of his personality. It is as con- 
ceivable on this hypothesis, as on any other, that 
a preexisting angel, or the Deity himself, was 
incarnated in a body so generated. All our a 
priori speculations are out of place. We are in- 
terested to know what the Gospels say. Why 
for their teachings should we substitute the dog- 
matism of ignorant and misguided ages ? 

If it be asked why we care for one theory 
rather than the other, it seems a sufficient answer 
to point to the different effect upon our views of 
the reality of the person of Jesus. To how many 



14 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

minds he is not a real person ! His existence 
seems to belong not to the domain of yeritable 
history, but to that of legendary theology. Plato, 
Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, are real persons ; but 
Jesus, to many, is a fabulous demi-god. His name 
stands for a spectre. The perplexing traditions 
of his birth cast a shadowy mystery over the 
whole of his life. Christians of all names do in- 
deed say that they believe in his humanity ; but 
to many this is little better than a mere make- 
belief. Is there any other name in history around 
which have gathered such a mass of confused and 
self-contradictory associations ? 

No sooner had the person of Jesus been envel- 
oped in a mythical cloud than a host of perplex- 
ing questions arose to distract the Church. It 
was asked, Was his flesh of the same essence as 
his divinity? Was his body created or un- 
created? If uncreated, did it once form a part of 
the Trinitj^ ? If created, when, where, and out 
of what, Avas it made ? Was his body corruptible 
or incorruptible? If corruptible, how could it 
ascend to heaven? If incorruptible, how could ^ 
he be said to have assumed human nature ? If 
he was equal to the Father and the Spirit, why 
was he sent to suffer and die, rather than either 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

of the other persons of the Trinity? Did he suf- 
fer in his human nature, or in his divine nature, 
or in both ? If he suffered in his human nature 
alone, where is the infinite atonement ? If he 
suffered in the divine nature, did the Father and 
the Spirit suffer with him ? Did he have two 
wills, or only one will ? How can a generated 
son be equal to an ungenerated father ? 

Every reader of ecclesiastical history knows 
that these are only a few of the problems that 
have fed the fires of controversy. Nor can it be 
denied that the generally accepted theology of 
to-day offers stumbling-blocks to faith. The dis- 
tinction attempted to be drawn between what 
Jesus said in his human nature and what he said 
in his divine nature, implies prevarications which 
we should be slow to impute to a good man. 

Thej^ thus interfere with the prompt move- 
ments of the heart. Not that there are no pas- 
sionate expressions of love for Jesus ; but have 
we ever tried to analyze the emotions probably at 
the bottom of them ? We have, perhaps, found a 
sense of weakness, of a need of forgiveness and 
help, and a longing for peace and trust, all of 
which have looked out for an arm on which they 
may lean. But these emotions stand apart from 



16 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

any clear conception of him on whom it is said 
they rest. We mark their subjective intensity, 
and not their objective reality. Do those who 
are so absorbed in what they feel know how Jesus 
feels? Is it possible, with their dim views of his 
personality, to have a living sympathy wdth his 
soul? 

Hence the frequent remark that the prevalent 
type of piety is wanting in manliness. If men 
feel that '• Jesus has done all for them/* that 
they have only to go to him '• just as they are," 
that he - washes away their sins," and " hides 
them in the cleft of the rock." is it strange that 
this passive trust should lack an inward energy? 
Is not here one reason why so many keep on the 
same plane of Christian experience from the time 
of conversion to the time of death? This help- 
less reliance is thu^ reo^arded as the crowninor 
work of him who came that they •• might have 
life and might have it more abundantly." What 
we all need for our moral quickening is a pro- 
founder sympathy with the humanity' of Jesus ; 
but how can that sympathy exist under the shad- 
ows that cloud the scenes of his birth ? 

There are signs of the coming of a better day. 
The progress of our civilization is marked by a 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

deeper appreciation of the character of Jesus — 
his gentleness, his disinterestedness, his self-sacri- 
fice, the depth of his spiritual insight, the clear- 
ness and strength of his intellectual convictions, 
and the force of his will. These lead us into his 
soul. We see it was a human soul. Born into 
the world like man's soul, and like man's soul in- 
creasing in wisdom as he grew in stature, it was 
the vehicle of the spirit given to him '' without 
measure," and coming upon him as he was fitted 
to receive it. By such a view he is not thrust out 
of the sphere of our human conceptions and of 
our intelligent love. Our faith may rest on more 
real and stable foundations. 

Hence it does not seem too much to look for 
a deeper and sincerer manifestation of the spirit 
of Jesus when those mists of error are not inter- 
posed between him and our minds. That great 
soul, whose influence amid all these obstacles has 
weighed on the civilized world more than that of 
all other souls put together, may exert a renewed 
power when we can see him more clearly, and 
can love him more profoundly. 

We have only glanced at some of the reasons 
which draw us to a subject that stands connected 



18 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

with many curious problems of Biblical criticism, 
with one of the most savage controversies that 
has disgraced the history of the Church, and with 
a wonderful literature, little known by Protest- 
ants, that grew out of the worship of the Virgin 
Mary. 

We have no novel explanations to offer, but 
wish simply to " stand in the way and ask for 
the old paths." 

It is only with a reverent hand that we pre- 
sume to touch the sacred pictures which have 
been the world's delight and instruction through 
so many 'centuries ; with the prayer, in the first 
place, that we may not mar their beauty, and, 
secondly, that if we fail to remove any of the 
blotches with which rude times have overlaid 
them, this success may be given to some other. 

We write in the interest of no sect or creed, 
and we ask our readers to follow us in that can- 
did and honest spirit by which we hope that we 
too may be guided. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PROBLEM. 

rriHERE are eight yerses in the first chaptei 
-*^ of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and thirteen 
verses in the first chapter of the Gospel of St. 
Luke, on which all the dogmas in regard to 
Christ's birth have been built. 

It is so necessary for a just examination of our 
subject to have these verses readily under the 
eye, that we shall here quote the words of both 
Evangelists. 

St. Matthew's Gospel reads as follows : — 

Chapter i. 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on 
this wise : When as his mother Mary was espoused 
to Joseph, before they came together, she was found 
with child of the Holy Ghost. 

19. Then Joseph her husbaud, being a just man, and 
not willing to make her a public example, was 
minded to put her away privily. 

20. But while he thought on these things, behold, 
the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a 



20 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 

dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not 
to take unto thee Mary thy wife : for that which is 
conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost ; 

21. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt 
call his name Jesus ; for he shall save his people 
from their sins. 

22. Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled 
which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, 
saying : 

23. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall 
bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Em- 
manuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. 

24. Then Joseph, being raised from sleep did as the 
angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto 
him his wife : 

25. And knew her not till she had brought forth 
her first-born son : and he called his name Jesus. 

St. Luke's Gospel reads as follows : — 

Chapter i. 26. And in the sixth month the angel 
Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, 
named Nazareth, 

27. To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was 
Joseph, of the house of David ; and the virgin's 
name was Mary. 

28. And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, 
thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee : 
blessed art thou among women. 



THE PROBLEM. 21 

29. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his 
saying, and cast in her mind what manner of sani- 
tation this should be. 

30. And the angel said unto her, Fear not Mary, 
for thou hast found favor with God. 

31. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, 
and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name 
Jesus. 

32. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of 
the Highest ; and the Lord God shall give unto 
him the throne of his father David : 

33. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob 
for ever ; and of his kingdom there shall be no 
end. 

34. Then said Mary unto the angel. How shall this 
be, seeing I know not a man ? 

35. And the angel answered and said unto her, The 
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power 
of the Highest shall overshadow thee : therefore 
also that holy thing which shall be born of thee 
shall be called the Son of God. 

36. And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also 
conceived a son in her old age ; and this is the 
sixth month with her who was called barren : 

37. For with God nothing shall be impossible. 

38. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the 
Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. And 
the angel departed from her. 



22 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

Neither St. Mark nor St. Jolin has one word 
relating to the details named in the above 
twenty-one verses. In the case of St. John an 
explanation has often been given of his silence. 
It is generally believed that he wrote after he 
had seen the other three Gospels ; and it may 
not have fallen into his design, it has been said, 
to repeat what he had there found correctly nar- 
rated. 

But his design, whatever it was, did not pre- 
vent him from repeating many other things 
which his predecessors had recorded ; why did 
he omit this ? As he wrote, he says, John xx. 31, 
to show '' that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
God," it is not easy to see why there is no refer- 
ence to such proofs as the above texts are now 
thought to furnish, especially as he must have 
known that his work might fall into hands that 
would never receive the other Gospels. 

It is even more difficult to account for the 
silence of St. Mark, who was a companion of 
St. Peter, from whose lips, as is believed, he 
obtained the materials of his Gospel. St. Peter 
was a native of Galilee, was one of the most in- 
timate disciples of Jesus, and doubtless person- 
ally knew his parents. These marvelous inci- 



THE PROBLEM. 23 

dents that preceded the birth of his Master, if 
they occurred in the manner in which in later 
times they have been understood, must have 
been the subject of frequent conversation in the 
circle in which he lived, and must liav^e been im- 
pressed deeply upon his ardent mind. How hap- 
pens it that we do not get one word about them 
through his interpreter, St. Mark ? 

There is another question somewhat perplex- 
ing. St. MattheAv's eight verses give account of 
the angelic visitation to Joseph, but have nothing 
to say in regard to the revelation made to Mary. 
The fact is precisely opposite in the thirteen 
verses in St. Luke, where we read of the angelic 
visitation to Mary, but nothing is said of the 
revelation made to Joseph. Of course, in such 
brief memoirs some things must have been omit- 
ted by each writer, and we have no full history 
until we put all their accounts together ; bu* 
there does not seem to be a ready answer to the 
question, why, if they attached importance to 
these traditions, each writer gave only half of the 
story, not knowing that anybody would report 
the other half. 

There are still other queries that must have 
suggested themselves to every thoughtful reader. 



24 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

If our common interpretation of the above A^erses 
be correct, how happened it that John the Bap- 
tist was so ignorant of Jesus ? Twice he said, 
'' I knew him not." John i. 31, 33. They were 
nearly of the same age. had been brought up in 
the same region, their mothers were cousins, and 
were well acquainted with each other, and, ac- 
cording to the received interpretation, both moth- 
ers had the most amazing angelic visitations, in 
regard to which they conversed together. 

Christian art has interpreted all these facts as 
implying a familiar acquaintance with each other, 
and a mutual acquaintance on the part of their 
children. In numberless " Holy Families," the 
infant John and the infant Jesus are represented 
as saluting each other. It is true the children 
may have grown up apart ; but even then, on 
the supposition of a literal understanding of the 
above texts, it seems incomprehensible that these 
stupenduous events attending the birth of these 
children, events which must have been in their 
families the subject of frequent conversation and 
auguries, should not have led John to know 
Jesus. 

Our Avonder does not here cease. Did not 
Jesus himself know of the marvelous circum- 



THE PROBLEM. 25 

stances tliat preceded his birth ? Did not his 
mother, who " kept all these sayings in her 
heart," ever speak of them to that child in re- 
gard to whom they had excited such surprising 
expectations ? How happens it, then, that Jesus 
never referred to them when he was so often 
intent upon proving that he came from God ? 

It can hardly be maintained that some gen- 
eral words of his, such as, '' I came down from 
Heaven," '' I am from above," '' whom the Father 
sent into the world," are such decisive references 
to his birth, as, in the case supposed, we should 
expect from his lips. Phrases of an equivalent 
meaning he applied to his disciples, whom, he 
said, he sent into the world, as the Father had 
sent him. Had it been a point capable of proof, 
or one of admitted belief in the circle of his 
family and friends, that his origin was gener- 
ically different from any other being, that his 
birth had been foretold by celestial visitants, and 
that he had been supernaturally conceived, does 
it not seem amazing that Jesus never once clearly 
appealed to this evidence of his divine mission ? 

When he was arraigned as a common disturber 
of the peace, Pilate wanted to know who he was, 
and showed signs of a willingness to release him. 



26 THE BTRTH OF JESUS. 

Jesus said, " For this was I born, and for this 
cause came I into the world, that I might bear 
witness to the truth." John xviii. 37. Was not 
here one place where we should have expected 
him to give some hint of the miraculous manner 
of his birth ? If this had been a point that was 
then believed, or was capable of proof, could any- 
thing have been more in his defence ? Why was 
not some reference to it here made ? 

Nor is this all. Why is it that throughout the 
Gospels there is no appeal to the events above 
recited? Excepting in the verses quoted, those 
events are as much ignored in all the Gospels, 
and in every part of each Gospel, as if they had 
been recorded in another history, and concerned 
some other being. 

If it should be said that St. John refers to 
them in the Proem of his Gospel, when he says, 
'' The Word was God .... and the Word became 
flesh," we must ask the reader to pause foi* one 
moment upon the meaning of that statement. It 
is possible to thrust interpretations into it that go 
a great way beyond what it affirms. It does not 
say where, or how, or when the Divine Spirit 
was incarnated in Jesus Christ. It does not, 
therefore, conflict with the supposition that God's 



THE PROBLEM. 27 

spirit came upon him gradually as he " increased 
in wisdom and stature," and came in harmony 
with the development of his mental and moral 
life. Thus these words seem to us to have no 
necessary bearing upon the question of a miracu- 
lous birth. 

If it should be said that this Proem of St. 
John's Gospel affirms a personal existence of 
Jesus, before his birth on earth, it may be well 
to ask, not only if we do not assign to the Evan- 
gelist's words ideas which are not necessarily 
there, but also if we do not impute to him the 
very doctrine which he undertook to refute. It 
was against a Gnostic conception of some Eon, or 
Being, distinct from God, that St. John's intro- 
duction is generally supposed to be aimed ; and 
he says that it was God's Logos that was in the 
beginning, which created the world, and became 
incarnated ; and this he repeatedly affirms was no 
distinct person, but was God himself, as God's 
Life and Light were God himself. 

Perhaps it will be said that in such brief me- 
moirs one statement of a miraculous birth was 
enough. But how did each writer know that it 
had been stated at all? Besides, as a matter of 
fact, each writer often repeated what the others 



28 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

had said. Nor this alone. Each at times re- 
peated what he himself had recorded. The 
feeding of the five thousand, the predictions 
of Christ's sufferings, of his rejection by the 
Jews, of his crucifixion by the priests, these, 
and other important events in their narratives, 
were not dismissed once for all. They were re- 
ferred to again and again. Now the events pre- 
ceding Christ's birth, taking them as generally 
understood, are not only among the most extraor- 
dinary in the Evangelical Narratives, but are the 
most important in their bearing upon the great 
point which tlie Gospels were written to estab- 
lish. Why this silence about them ? 

Our surprise culminates in considering one 
other fact. We have in the Book of Acts re- 
ports of sermons preached by the Apostles who 
endeavored to prove that Jesus is the Son of 
God; and following the Book of Acts, we have 
Epistles sent to churches in different parts of 
the world, designed to set forth the same leading 
truth. But in all of them. Sermons and Epistles, 
there is no statement of the miraculous concep- 
tion of Christ. 

Take the sermon recorded in the third chapter 
of Acts, which Peter preached after he had 



THE PROBLEM. 29 

healed the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the 
Temple. His object was to explain to the Jews 
who Christ was, as one glorified by the God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but denied by them, 
and killed, and raised from the dead. How per- 
tinent to his purpose to refer to his supernatural 
birth, if that had been a point capable of proof 
or belief. 

Or take the sermon, recorded in the seventh 
chapter of Acts, which Stephen preached just 
before his martyrdom, — the longest apostolical 
sermon of which we have any record, — giving a 
resume of Jewish and Christian history, from the 
call of Abraham to the crucifixion of Jesus. 
Why not one hint about this miraculous concep- 
tion ? 

Look, also, to the sermon which Paul preached 
in Antioch of Pisidia, recorded in the thirteenth 
chapter of Acts, a sermon recounting prominent 
events from the exodus out of Egypt to the res- 
urrection of Jesus. Why not one word said 
about his supernatural birth ? 

Moreover, in the Epistles of St. Paul, of St. 
Peter, of St. John, there is no distinct allusion 
to this point, though, had it been then under- 
stood as it is understood now, there could have 



30 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

been nothing more natural, or more decisive than 
to adduce it. 

It is true, some have quoted the expressions of 
St. Paul, Romans ix. 5, "of whom as concerning 
the flesh Christ came;" implying, it may be 
thought, that he had also another origin. But 
the original expression, Kara o-a/om, means, as the 
commentators tell us, hereditary descent, and so 
damages the use often made of the text. 

Another expression, Philippians ii. 6, '' Who, 
being in the form of God — took upon him the 
form of a servant ; " has, as it may be said, a 
reference to a supernatural origin. But perhaps 
we shall by and by see that later opinions as- 
cribed a meaning to these words which the writer 
could not have had in his mind. And, moreover, 
in regard to that something which Christ liad in 
him higher than what he inherited by natural 
descent, that something which made him in the 
form of God, — as that might have come upon 
him at any period of his growth, — what proof 
have these texts of a miraculous birth ? 

In regard to the Epistles, it must be remem- 
bered that they were sent to the churches before 
the Gospels had. been written. At least, we have 
no distinct traces of the Gospels until after the 



THE PROBLEM. 31 

transmission of the Epistles. Every reader Avill 
at once see what ^bearing this fact has upon the 
argument before us. 

It might be now said that the writers of the 
Epistles felt that there was no need of relating 
the miraculous birth of Jesus, or of appealing to 
this as a proof of his divine origin, if they knew 
that the history of that birth was already in the 
hands of their readers. But there is absolutely 
nothing to show that the Romans, the Corin- 
thians, the Galatians, the E^^hesians, the Thessa- 
lonians, had any knowledge of that history, had 
ever heard of it, or had the least suspicion of it. 

Indeed, the presumption is all the other way. 
The family traditions were appended to the 
memoirs of Jesus at a later time. They occupied 
no place in the first, the Epistolary, publication 
of the Gospel. Hence they were the ground- 
work of no argument, and received no distinct 
allusion. It seems incredible that Paul and Peter 
and John regarded them as of importance in the 
life of Jesus. 

Certainly, here are noteworthy facts. This 
uniform, persistent, and unbroken reticence is in 
strange contrast with what we find at a later 
day. A way of referring to the birth of Jesus 



32 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

sprung up in after ages which ascribed an im- 
portance to the eight verses of 'St. Matthew, and 
to the thirteen verses of St. Luke, which, so far 
as appears, was never imagined by Jesus and his 
apostles. History tell us when it sprung up, and 
where it sprung up, and how it sprung up, and 
how it colored the whole stream of Christian 
tliought from that time onwards, and shapes 
opinions even to this day. 

And history tells us, also, of the wild hypoth- 
eses which, in modern times, have been invented 
to get rid of these interpretations. Without re- 
ferring to the English Deists of the last century, 
who ridiculed the stories of Christ's birth as 
absurd fables, we need only allude to Strauss, 
who sets them all aside as myths, that is, as 
something which was " characterized by the rich 
pictorial and imaginative mode of thought and 
expression of primitive ages." 

Professor Weisse maintained that these nar- 
ratives were pious imitations of Grecian legends, 
designed to show that Christ had an origin some- 
thing like that of heathen gods ; and of this 
hypothesis Neander well says that " Weisse 
has transferred his own mode of contemplating 
heathen myths to a people that would have re- 
volted from it." 



THE PROBLEM. 33 

Eiclihorn regarded these stories as the expres- 
sions of an unscientific age, addicted to wonder, 
and in love with the marvelous. Paulus distin- 
guished between fact and opinion, and held that 
this last covered the record with the drapery of 
miracle, which must be drawn aside to see the 
historical verity. Kant held to a moral inter- 
pretation, looking for a sense which agrees wdth 
the laws of the pure reason, and he regarded the 
miraculous stories only as an imaginative de- 
scription of an ideal humanity pleasing to God. 
De Wette thought that after Jesus had become 
famous, reports about him were repeated from 
mouth to mouth, till his early years became 
gradually encircled with these poetical embel- 
lishments. Renan believes that these tales are 
legendary accounts, framed after the pattern of 
similar stories in the Old Testament. 

In view of this wide diversity of opinion it may 
be well, first of all, to consider carefully what the 
gospel record actually says. And what if we 
find that the difficulty of explanation lies less in 
that than in ourselves ? If we see that the record 
is right, and that it is we who are wrong, Ave 
who have blundered over it, this will be a kind 
of discovery which has often been made before. 
3 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PROBABLE FACTS. 

rjlO the mere English reader each Gospel seems 
to be entirely the composition of the writer 
whose name it bears ; and we usually regard it as 
a connected work from one and the same hand. 
An acquaintance with the original language shows 
that this impression is incorrect. Criticism soon 
learns to disintegrate each Gospel, and to recog- 
nize in the different style of different portions 
different documents which had been put together. 
An illustration may give some light to this 
subject. We may suppose an kicident in the life 
of Washington to have been described in the 
rude diction of a common soldier, writing at the 
time of its occurrence, and afterwards other facts 
of the same incident to have been described in 
the plain historical language of Mr. Sparks, and 
more ornately in the flowing periods of Mr. 
Everett. Bancroft may have put all the accounts 
together just as he found them, and the whole 
may be known as his history. 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 35 

Now if that history should be translated into 
French, and from that into Spanish, and from 
that into Italian, these peculiarities of diction 
would be likely tp be worn away in passing 
through so many hands ; and to the Italian reader 
the work might seem homogeneous, and all from 
the pen of Bancroft. 

But suppose the Italian reader should be well 
acquainted with English, and should read the 
history, not after these successiye translations, 
but just as Bancroft left it ; he would at once 
mark the diversity of style, and would unhesitat- 
ingly assign portions of the narrative to the un- 
lettered soldier above referred to, and portions to 
the chaste words of Sparks, and other portions to 
the rounded periods of Everett, and connecting 
portions to the historian Bancroft. If he were a 
master of the English tongue, and acquainted 
with the different styles of these writers, he 
never would make the blunder of assig^ninp; all 
these different compositions to one and the same 
hand. 

In each Gospel, not as we have it after num- 
berless translations into other languages, but as 
we find it in the original tongue, there is a va- 
riety of style somewhat corresponding to the 



36 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

above supposition. For example, the first four 
verses of Luke's Gospel are in pure Greek, and 
then follows an entirely different diction full of 
Hebraisms. It is the account of the birth of John 
and of Jesus ; and if the reader will notice the 
fifth verse of the first chapter he will see that it 
begins as a separate and distinct document. 

A similar remark may be made of the first 
chapter of Matthew. The first seventeen verses 
appear as an independent genealogy. Accord- 
ingly they are called " The Book of the Genera- 
tion of Jesus Christ." Then the eighteenth verse 
begins as a separate record, though the difference 
in style between this and the rest of Matthew's 
Gospel is not so marked as in the case of Luke, 
for Luke was a man of more culture than Mat- 
thew. 

The poetical rhj^thm of the Magnificat^ Luke i. 
46-55, and of the Benedictus Dominits of Zacha- 
rias, Luke i. 68-79, is wholly different from the 
general, matter-of-fact style of Luke. The last 
chapter of Mark critics believe to be an appendix 
to that Gospel. John's Gospel they suppose orig- 
inally ended with the last verse of the twentieth 
chapter. The first part of the eighth chapter of 
John, it is thought, is misplaced, and the twenty- 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 3T 

second chapter of Luke has some peculiarities of 
diction that distinguish it from the rest of that 
book. His genealogy, Luke iii. 23-38, he prob- 
ably quoted from some family record, without 
once dreaming of indorsing its entire literal ac- 
curacy. 

At the time the Gospels were composed there 
were many memoirs of the birth and life of 
Jesus in circulation. Luke expressly bears wit- 
ness to this fact. He begins his record with the 
words, '• Forasmuch as many have taken in hand 
to set forth in order a declaration of those things 
which are most surely believed among us." So 
also the existence of apocryphal Gospels is at- 
tested by ecclesiastical history. It is probable 
that a vast number of these memoirs had been 
written for the use of different churches ; some 
containing the recollections of one apostle, some 
those of another, some the reminiscences in the 
family of Jesus, or brief annals by various hands 
of what he said and did in the places he visited. 
Several of these documents were put together ; 
and the four collections most generally approved 
have come down to us under the four names they 
bear. 

We must not suppose, therefore, that Mary 



88 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

improvised the Magnificat at the time of the vis- 
itation, or that Zacharias sang the Benedictus at 
the birth of his son. These were probably com- 
posed long afterwards, as expressive of the sup- 
posed feelings at the time, and were inserted in 
the family memoirs to which the subsequent emi 
nence of » John and of Jesus gave rise. 

These family memoirs, as Olshausen suggests, 
were adopted by Luke ; oftentimes, as that critic 
adds, ^' quite unchanged or but slightly amended." 
And so it happened that more or less of them 
were attached to the evangelical narrative, none, 
indeed, to Mark, or John, a few only to Matthew, 
but more to Luke. 

Apparently, as Ave judge such things, they 
were accidentally attached, as it is evident the 
apostles did not assign much importance to these 
domestic reminiscences. Of this we have proof 
in the little use they made of them, as we have 
seen in the preceding chapter. We shall find a 
still further proof when we come to mark what 
these reminiscences really mean. 

An angel appeared to Zacharias announcing 
the birth of John. An angel appeared to Mary 
announcing the birth of Jesus. An angel ap- 
peared to Joseph to allay his suspicions, and to 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 39 

suggest the flight into Egypt. What was the 
origin of this language about angels, and what 
does it denote ? 

These questions carry us back to the earlj^ lit- 
erary culture of the Hebrew people. Prior to 
alphabetic writing they undoubtedly followed the 
fashion of all other nations in the use of picture- 
language. Some visible representation stood for 
every mental experience. 

How do thoughts come into the mind ? How 
do hopes and persuasions enter the heart ? To 
primitive people it did not seem that these are 
the natural effect of our own reflections, as indeed 
they may not always be. It was believed that 
all deep impressions were sent within us directly 
by God. If sent, it was supposed there was 
a messenger to bear them. Hence sprung up 
the idea of a multitude of celestial beings charged 
with the duty of bringing convictions and emo- 
tions to human souls. 

Early art, prior to the invention of letters, 
expressed this belief, as we have said, by pict- 
ures, which in turn helped to fasten it more 
firmly on the popular mind. The messenger was 
depicted as being in youthful beauty, aerial and 
winged ; and names, found during the Babylo- 



40 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

nian captivity, were given to the chief actors in 
this imaginary host. Before the nse of yerbal 
language, how else could there be expressions 
of feelings and thoughts supposed to have come 
from heav^en ? These pictures of angels, and 
the language which subsequently grew out of 
them, were a necessity in the course of human 
progress. 

Thus, in our abstract terms, we say, '" I am 
convinced of such a truth." But in early ages 
men did not regard this conviction as somethiug 
evolved by themselves. They thought that God 
sent it to them, and that an angel brought it. 
Men contmued to use this picturesque diction 
after it had passed out of its first literal signi- 
fication. Indeed, it retains to some extent its 
hold upon the imagination to tliis day. We 
still say the thought came to me like an angel 
from heaven. We say also that we are sustained 
by the angel of hope. 

When we ourselves use this metaphorical lan- 
guage, we see at once that it is employed in a 
secondary sense. But we do not always remem- 
ber that the writers of the New Testament may 
have so used it also. To their words we ascribe 
a bald, literal meaning ; and so we make the mis- 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 41 

take which, a thousand years hence, an inter- 
preter of words used now may make, who, when 
he reads that we were thunderstruck at hearing 
some news, should gravely say that we had act- 
ually received a shock of an electrical bolt. 

In the mouths of the evangelical wiiters this 
language about angels was probably thus used 
in a subjective sense. It was employed to carry 
on, in the form of a dialogue with a supposed 
outward person, a wholly internal process of 
thought. Unlettered persons among us still use 
language in a similar way. A plain man de- 
scribed his doubts about helping a beggar in the 
following style : '^ Sympathy for the poor fellow 
said give ; but justice urged that the beggar was 
able to work." This is exactlj^ in the manner of 
the verses in St. Matthew and St. Luke, only the 
writers of these verses would have called sym- 
pathy and justice by the name of angels. Until 
we see what the sacred writers really intended 
by this phraseology, Ave turn all their artless sto- 
ries into an absurd travesty. 

Evil spirits also, as it w^as believed, had a mis- 
sion to bring wicked suggestions and wishes; 
hence the whole hierarchy of demons. The 
temptation of Jesus is, as we suppose, usually 



42 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

interpreted as an internal experience, and not as 
an outward scene. It may be added that Jewish 
scholars, who know the meaning of old Hebrew 
modes of expression, do not believe that a per- 
son is implied by the word angel. (See Nean- 
der, vol. i. p. 42.) 

In the tenth and eleventh chapters of the Acts 
we see a frequent angelophania, or appearance of 
angels. But this Avas not appealed to in early- 
times as evidence of the truth of Christianity. 
It was understood to be the waj^ in which illiter- 
ate men expressed themselves. This mode of 
speech, as we have said, belongs everywhere to 
certain stages of culture, in which men make no 
discrimination between the operations of their 
own minds and the influence of higher powers. 
All that they think and feel in reflective states 
they regard as coming to them from above. 
Thus, in the Greek mythology, the warlike were 
actuated by Mars, the skilled by Apollo, the 
loving by Venus, the wise by Zeus ; and Socrates 
explained how the functions of these divinities 
ceased as soon as abstract terms were invented. 

So was it in the case of the Hebrews. The 
use of abstract terms superseded the angelopha- 
nia ; or at least banished it to the realm of 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 43 

poetry, in which, as we have before remarked, it 
still survives.^ 

Zacharias, a priest, married (for in those days 
marriage was a holy state, and it was impious to 
suppose that one contracted impurity thereby), 
shared the feeling so general in his day that the 
happiest lot of man was found in the parental 
relation ; and he and his wife had prayed for this 
blessing, which, through their age, had now 
seemed hopeless. Burning incense in a dark in- 
closure,^ lighted only by flames fitfully playing 
on the ascending smoke, his eye rested on some 
convolution at the right hand of the altar, as he 
was revolving in his mind his life-long prayer ; 
and a persuasion took possession of his soul that, 
after all, God Avould ansAver it. 

"^ Some attempt to explain the pictorial formation of Hebrew 
phrases may be found in a work published in Boston by Little, 
Brown, & Co., entitled Traces of Picture-ivriting in the Bible, by 
the anthor of this book. 

2 '' A sacred chamber into which the light of day never pene- 
trated, but where the dim fires of the altar, and the chandeliers, 
which were never extinguished, gave a solemn and uncertain 
light, still more bedimmed by the clouds of smoke arising froYn 
the newly-fed altar of incense. '* Milman's History of Christian- 
ity, chapter 2. 

Grotius thought that Zacharias offered up the national prayer 
for the coming of the Messiah, and that the exi)ression, thy prayer 
IS heard, refers to this. 



44 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

How often, in human experience, vivid subject- 
ive states mingle with outward objects, so thafc 
they mutually recall each other ! Who can say 
there was nothing divine in his persuasion, or 
that there was nothing unusual in the bestow- 
ment of a child to their advanced years ? If 
we do not recognize something '' supernatural " 
here, as certain metaphysical disquisitions ex- 
plain that word, does it follow that God was not 
in all this ? It was at least natural that, after- 
wards, the grateful and gratified father should 
devoutly recall the alternate hopes and fears that 
marked that memorable moment of self-com- 
munion. 

To the incense-burning priest it seemed as if 
his backwardness to believe in the possibility of 
the coveted blessing was a sinful distrust of. the 
divine power, and must be punished by a silence 
enjoined by the same angel-persuasion ^ that 
now had influence over him. Examples of self- 
imposed silence have not been unknown. See 
Daniel x. 15. We find them in almost every age, 
and in some cases men, as a voluntary penance, 

1 " Mr) Bwafxeuos \a\?i(raL dicitur is, qui vel propter ph ysica, vel 
propter moralia impedimenta loqui non potest." Rosenmiiller, 
in loco. 



I 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 45 

have not spoken a word for fifteen or twenty 
years. 

Tlie distrust and self-punishment of Zacharias 
were recalled years afterwards, when the emi- 
nence of the child had given such importance to 
these reminiscences. If they had been recorded 
in some family memoirs, and formed an episode 
in the private life of this domestic circle, they 
might easily get attached to the Gospel of Luke, 
though of no importance whatever as any his- 
torical proof. 

The universal belief *that the long-expected 
Messiah was soon to appear led every mother to 
ask, '' Who knows but that my child may be the 
favored one of God ? " A young woman, named 
Mary, had been espoused, at the age of sixteen, 
as the legends of the Church say, to a man much 
older than herself, by the name of Joseph, Avhose 
business it was, as Justin Martyr records, to 
make yokes and ploughs. 

In those days espousal was in fact a marriage. 
It gave the rights of a husband. Separation 
»could be effected only by a bill of divorce. Thus 
the law recognized this as a legal wedlock. But 
though the parties were really husband and wife, 
they did not live together until after some public 



46 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

ceremony of marriage. The phrase that de- 
scribed their state before this ceremony is, Trplv 
rj o-vveXOeiv, that is, before they lived together (see 
Matthew i. 18), it being the same phrase found 
in Acts i. 6, where we read, when the disciples 
came together^ and in many other Biblical texts. 
It is true, however, that it sometimes has the 
secondary meaning of cohabitation, though this 
is not its uniform signification. 

But it may be asked. Did not Mary say dis- 
tinctl}^ in Luke i. 34, " I know not a man " ? 
The student of the original Greek knows that 
the word here translated man is avhpa^ the usual 
New Testament word for husband. She only 
denied that she had a publicly recognized hus- 
band. Accordingly Olshausen translates the sen- 
tence, ''I do not live in a marriage connection 
with any one." 

At her age Mary was called a virgin, -n-apOivos, 
The exclusive meaning now generally attached 
to that word is modern. Virgin is the translation 
of the Hebrew word n::^^^, which means of mar- 
riageable age, (See Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon.) 
Thus a virgin could be a mother. We are 
told in Isaiah vii. 14, that a virgin shall be a 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 47 

mother.^ To express our modern idea of vir- 
ginity, other phrases were used, as may be seen 

1 If we accept the common interpretation of the birth of Jesus, 
and follow literally the words of Scripture, the birth referred to 
in Isaiah vii. 14, was just as supernatural and miraculous as that 
of Christ, and all the wonderful speculations gathered around the 
latter may as reasonably cluster around the former. We do not 
forget the explanation usually resorted to, that what was fore- 
told in the time of Ahaz had its fulfillment at the time of Christ. 
But in regard to this we quote the sensible words of Olshausen : 
" The immediate grammatical sense of the passage, Isaiah vii. 
14, necessarily requires a ^'eference to something present, since 
the TvapQevos who was to bring forth Immanuel, is represented 
by the prophet as a sign to Ahaz. A reference to the Messiah' 
born of a virgin centuries afterwards, appears to ansvv^er no 
end whatever for the immediate circumstances. It is most 
natural' to suppose that by -n-apdeuos is meant the betrothed of 
the prophet called in Isaiah viii. 3, nS^^H?, as being his wife. 
Uapdepos, equivalent to H^^b^, a young woman, is indeed in 
itself different from nbr^nH which necessarily denotes pure 
virginity. Looking at the passage free from prejudice, one is 
necessarily led to expect that Ahaz must have had something 
given him which he would live to see. It is very forced to re- 
fer the period of two or three years spoken of, to the coming 
of the Messiah, born centuries after." If one asks, what was 
there wonderful, what was there worthy to be called a "si^n," in 
a young woman's bringing forth a child, we find an answer to 
this question in Olshausen, who says that " the unity of refer- 
ence lies in the name Immanuel; " and if we ask further, why 
did St. Matthew refer to this passage in Isaiah, we probably find 
the reason in the fact that something took place which could be 



48 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

ill Judges xxi. 12^ Genesis xxiv. 16. So also in 
tlie writings of the Fathers, not indeed uniformly, 
but frequently, those women are called virgins to 
whom, in its modern sense, that word could not 
be applied.^ 

Who can paint the tender, prophetic thoughts 
which that young mother hardly dared whisper 
to herself ? Only those can do it who can recall 
the emotions of the first consciousness of mater- 
described in those old prophetic words, for now a young woman 
brought forth a child who was, in a sense higher even than in the 
time of Ahaz, a revealer of God, that is, an Immanuel. In regard 
to the sense of the irapBivos it may be added that the Fathers 
often interpret it as equivalent to our English word hride. This 
is the sense the word must have in Isaiah xlvii. 1. So in Esther 
ii. 19, we see that the king's concubines are called virgins. In 
Joel i. 8, we read that a virgin mourns the death of her hus- 
band. 

1 Tertullian, in the first half of the third century, applied the 
word virgins to those who lived in unlawful cohabitation with 
men. In the sermons of St. John Chrj^sostom, the mulieres 
siibintroductae are called virgins. In the letters of St. Jerome, 
young women who led criminal lives are called virgins. In the 
Letters of St. Leo, pope from 440 to 460, young married women 
are called virgins. In all these cases one sense of this w^ord was 
followed which had been established for more than a thousand 
years, for Homer calls a mother of two brave sons a "virgin.'' 
Iliad, lib. ii. line .514; and Herodotus speaks of certain " vir- 
gins " who presented their thank-offering for safe delivery in 
childbirth. Book iv. chap. 34. 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 49 ' 

nity. Was Mary to be a mother? But she 
said to herself, av8pa ov yti/wo-Kw, which Olshausen 
translates, '^ I do not live in a marriage connec- 
tion ; " and therefore it is too soon to open my 
heart to that great hope. And yet, who knows 
but that God has already in my virtual w^edlock 
favored me, that his protecting providence will 
shelter me, and that even I may be the chosen 
one to give his Messiah to the world, so that to 
my son may be applied the words recorded in 
Psalm Ixxxix. 4 ; Isaiah ix. 7, and Jeremiah 
xxxiii. 15 ? ^ 

In after years how distinctly she recalled the 
anxious mental debates of the first consciousness 
of her maternity, she who from her espousal 
lived in holy wedlock, and knew not one of those 
associations of impurity which the grossness of 
af tertimes ascribed to that state ; she who set 
forth in her own simple and primitive style the 

1 The fact that the words put into the mouth of the angel who 
addressed Mary were made up of quotations from the passages 
above referred to, seems a further indication that these words 
were not uttered by a celestial personage, in our modern sense of 
that word ; though one commentator suggests that he sees no 
difficulty in the idea that angels may quote the Old Testament, 
and carefully read the Bible '' to learn the gracious dispensations 
of God/' 

4 



50 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

dialogue she carried on with herself, representing 
every good persuasion as an angel coming from 
the very chief places of heaven,^ and weaving 
finally her joy into song, the whole composing a 
beautiful family memoir, which St. Luke had 
procured somewhere, and has handed down to us 
as a sweet and touching picture, though it was 
never thought of as any documentary proof until 
subsequent ages had misinterpreted and mis- 
used it. 

Joseph, too, was not expecting that his wife 
would so soon become a mother. In her modesty, 
and in a reserve perhaps the greater for their dis- 
parity of years, she did not speak to him of her 
condition ; time would reveal it. Accordingly 
the expression in this artless history is evpeOrj. 
She was found in that state perhaps on some re- 
turn after a few weeks' absence, for in these prim- 

1 This conception of some angels as coming from before the 
face of God is Persian. The Zendavesta refers to seven spirits 
who stand nearest the throne. After the Babylonian captivity 
the notion found its way into currents of Jewish thought. Al- 
lusion is made to it in various parts of the Old Testament written 
under Chaldean influence. See Zechariah vi. 5. But the idea, 
nowhere appears prior to the time of that influence. Probably it 
came at length to denote those impressions which were most 
surely divine. 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 51 

itive times business like Joseph's was not sta- 
tionary, but was carried on from place to place. 

How great was his surprise and joy ! In after 
life he well remembered the thoughts he had 
then revolved. It had seemed too great a bless- 
ing to come to him. He had dwelt on that idea 
so much that he had even supposed it possible, 
that Mary had been unfaithful to him ! Who 
can describe the mingled pathos and humor with 
which the old man used to tell the story, the 
smiles of surprise, and the tears of gratitude, that 
alternated in those earliest remembrances of that 
holy child. 

Does a father's heart find any difficulty in inter- 
preting this history, if he will not overlay it with 
prodigies that take it out of the sphere of all 
human experience, and will recognize here the 
action of that one dear nature which is common 
to us all ? And so Joseph used to describe his 
foolish suspicions, and to tell how they were all 
allayed by the angel conviction that God's good 
providence was in all this, and would make his 
son a light and blessing to the Avorld. 

And then, afterwards, the thought came to him 
in the night, in view of the dangers that beset 
the life of his child, that he must go where the 



52 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

hand of power could not harm it. We are told 
that he was warned in a dream. But it is by no 
means necessary to suppose that this was an im- 
pression made upon his passive mind when his 
senses were locked in slumber. 

The word dream in the Hebrew language cov- 
ers all deep impressions in quiet and reflective 
hours. Joseph had heard much of the character 
of Herod. It made him anxious. He felt that 
there was but one way of safety, and that was 
flight. That was borne clear and strong upon 
his mind, as an inspiration from God, a vision 
from heaven, as it may have been, and was not 
the less likely to have been because it came to 
him when his senses were awake. And here was 
another of those reminiscences of the birth and 
early life of Jesus, which fond parents loved to 
recall, and were fittingly treasured as family tra- 
ditions, though constituting no important evi- 
dence of the divine mission of their son. 

Their son, we repeat. The son of Joseph as 
well as of Mary. So Jesus was regarded during 
his life. The pedigree of Joseph derived all its 
importance from the fact that he was the father 
of Jesus. Jesus was called his son in the com- 
mon speech of his day. "Is not this the car- 



THE PROBABLE FACTS. 53 

penter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? " 
Matthew xiii. 55. " And they said, Is not this 
Joseph's son ? " Luke iv. 22. " And they said, Is 
not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father 
and mother we know?" John vi. 42. "Philip 
findeth Nathanael and saith unto him, We have 
found him of whom Moses in the law, and the 
prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of 
Joseph." John i. 45. 

Surely Mary, the mother, ought to be regarded 
as a competent witness in the case, and she said 
to her son, when she found him sitting with the 
doctors in the Temple, ''Son, why hast thou 
thus dealt with us? behold thy father and I 
have sought thee sorrowing." Luke ii. 48. 

And now, in surveying the exegesis offered in 
this chapter, as also that submitted in the chapter 
following, no doubt every reader may suggest 
other interpretations which, without the supposi- 
tion of a miracle, will account for all the facts re- 
corded in the texts under review. It is an im- 
portant consideration that so many explanations 
7na7/ be suggested. The greater the number of 
possible hypotheses the greater the incredibility 
of the astounding traditions of past ignorant ages. 



64 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

Subsequent pages will show how absolutely un- 
founded these traditions are. But before the evi- 
dence of this is submitted, our attention may be 
given to other incidents, connected with the birth 
of Jesus, in regard to Avhich the imagination has 
run wild. We refer to the stories of the shep- 
herds and the Magi. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 

ri^HE rejoicing of the shepherds that watched 
their flocks by night, and the visit of the 
Magi, are two other beautiful events connected 
with the birth of Jesus, and we will now try to 
understand what they were. 

We must, for the moment, lay aside a thousand 
poetic associations that have been attached to 
them, for such associations have been the growth 
of subsequent ages, — the expressions of grateful 
and devout hearts, delighted here to find what is 
wonderful, and pleased just in proportion as the 
subject is lifted up into regions of awe and poetic 
significance. 

No words can be necessary to show that these 
incidents, whatever they were, produced but little 
impression at the time. We find the account of 
the shepherds only in the Gospel of St. Luke, 
and throughout the sacred canon there is not a 
hint of it, in sermon, or letter, or narrative, by 



56 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

any one else. St. Luke probably found the story 
in some domestic memoirs or tradition of the 
family of Mary, and appended it to his history. 

Even in the family of Mary, as is evident, the 
story left no abiding impression. St. John tells 
us that the members of that family once besought 
Jesus to manifest himself openly to the world, 
and he adds, " For neither did his brethren be- 
lieve in him." John vii. 5. At another time, as 
St. Mark says, his friends laid hold of him, " for 
they said, He is beside himself."' Mark iii. 21. 
How could such things have been had the story 
of the shepherds and of the Magi left any deep 
mark in the memory of his family ? 

Probably then, in some incidental and almost 
unnoticed occurrence, we shall find the true 
origin of these narratives, — some little by-act 
which perhaps Mary alone laid up in her heart, 
with no thought that it would be the tiny seed 
of a tree whose leaves would spread over the 
whole earth. 

In naming a possible explanation, one exposes 
himself to the derision of many whose minds 
have long been settled on other conclusions which 
they do not wish to have disturbed. The new 
suggestion has a show of presumption in the out- 



THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 57 

set, as if it could weigh anything with the opin- 
ions of all the world in the other scale. But 
fair-minded readers will cover an honest inquiry 
with no such odium. Rather will they consider 
with candor an investigation which tries to go 
beneath unreasoning and hazy traditions, and to 
find something consistent with the admitted facts 
of the case. 

Much that is said about poor, humble, sim- 
ple-hearted shepherds comes from modern life. 
Shepherds near Bethlehem, eighteen centuries 
ago, were not what shepherds are now. The care 
of their flocks was the business of the wealthiest 
and most intelligent men. They were generally, 
devout men, for such was the common type of 
the Hebrew character ; and if Bethlehem was re- 
garded as the predicted birthplace of the expect- 
ed Messiah, the shepherds of that neighborhood 
might hear with wonder and joy of the birth of 
every infant on whom their great hope could pos- 
sibly rest. 

Joseph and Mary may have arrived at the 
home of some men who divided their time be- 
tween that home in Bethlehem, and the care of 
their flocks by night on the neighboring hills. 
The utmost uncertainty exists, as everybody 



68 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

knows, in regard to the precise spot where Jesus 
was born. Some think it was a cave or grotto 
where cattle were kept, and both Justin Martyr 
and Origen say that this was the uninterrupted 
tradition of Bethlehem ; while others believe that 
the birth took place in the lower part of a build- 
ing used as a stable, while the upper stories were 
for human habitation, the domestic arrangement 
so common in the East. 

All this is simpl)^ conjecture. It is of more 
importance to observe that the owners of the 
premises which Joseph and Mary occupied may 
have been their friends. There is an old church 
tradition that Andrew was one of the shepherds, 
and that afterwards, in his old age, he became 
one of the twelve. It may have been with him 
that Joseph and Mary stayed. What more nat- 
ural than that her youth, and a beauty, the tra- 
ditions of which have been so long preserved, 
should awaken the liveliest interest in all hearts ? 

We have not been told how long Mary had 
been in Bethlehem before the birth of her child ; 
but when the joyful event took place, and her 
friends on the hillsides were informed of it by 
some messenger, coming to them with torches, 
and reporting the birth of a son, in the favored 



THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 59 

line of David, who possibly might fulfill their 
hopes, and telling them that if they would go 
into the town they might see the new-born in its 
lowly abode, how natural that these shepherds 
should rejoice, and it should seem to them as if 
the stars of heaven were shouting sweet words 
of peace and good will ! Have there been no 
times in our life when we felt as if a thousand 
voices, all around, syllabled the deep emotions of 
our heart ? On entering Bethlehem they may 
have spoken of their feelings to the delighted 
mother, who, as we read, '' kept all these things 
and pondered them in her heart ; " though such 
relations would not have a like interest to any- 
body else. 

Neander and Schleiermacher are of opinion that 
this little episode about the shepherds was some 
detached memoir, made probably by the shep- 
herds themselves. Neander says : '' The facts 
may be supposed to have been as follows : in 
after times the faithful were anxious to preserve 
the minute features of the life of Jesus. We see 
every day how anxiously men look for individual 
traits in the childhood of great men. Especially 
would any one who had opportunity prosecute 
such researches in the remarkable place Avhere 



60 THE BIKTH OF JESUS. 

Christ Tvas born. Perhaps one of these inquirers 
there found one of the shepherds who l^ad wit- 
nessed these events, and whose memory of them 
was yividly recalled after his conversion to Chris- 
tianity. We cannot be sure that such a man 
would give, with literal accuracy, the words that 
he had heard.'' ^ 

If we suppose that here was substantially the 
whole occurrence, it would be in accordance with 
the then style of expression with unlettered He- 
brews, to narrate it as we find it in the Gospel 
of Luke. If we see an air of naturalness and 
truthfulness in this narrative, as thus explained, 
if it seems that the common, the universal feel- 
ings of human hearts here display themselves, 
perhaps we shall feel a confidence in the truth of 
this history which we cannot have in the prod- 
igies with which subsequent ages have overlaid 
it. 

The story of the Magi is found nowhere ex- 
cept in the second chapter of the Gospel of St. 
Matthew, nor is there the least allusion to it in 
any other place in the New Testament. How 
fruitful it has been of wonderful legends and fan- 
ciful speculations in all past ages ! Before sci- 

1 Neander's Life of Christ, Harper's edit., p. 22. 



THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 61 

ence had revealed to the world what a star is in 
our solar system, popular credulity saw no difl&- 
culty in believing that one of the planets of the 
firmament moved along just above the heads of 
these men from the East, and stood over the 
house where the infant Jesus was laid. In a vast 
number of old church pictures all this is edify- 
ingly represented. 

But after a while even this needed some addi- 
tional element of wonder ; and so Ignatius, in one 
of his epistles says, " This star sparkled brill- 
iantly beyond all other stars, while the other 
stars with the sun and moon formed a choir 
around it, but its blaze outshone them all." 

Commentators in recent times, seeing the ab- 
surdity of this, have contented themselves in say- 
ing with Schleiermacher, " We may well leave the 
statement in the judicious indefiniteness in which 
it is expressed by Matthew;" or with Olshaus- 
en, who says that the expression that the star 
stood over the house '' was the natural concep- 
tion of their childish feeling." Every boy knows 
that a star seems to move when he moves, and 
to stop when he stops. 

The Magi themselves have also been the ob- 
jects of many wonderful legends. Tradition says 



62 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

there were three of them, and gives their names 
as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. It was said 
that their ages were respectively sixty, forty, 
and tAventy, representing three important epochs 
of human life. It was said again that thej^ came 
from the then known three great divisions of the 
globe, Europe, Asia, and Africa, to signify that 
the whole world had an interest in that infant. 

Accordingly in many church pictures one of 
them is a black man. Raphael followed this 
tradition in his famous picture of the " Adoration 
of the Magi," in the Loggia in the Vatican ; and 
his example has been imitated by many artists. 
Something significant was found in the gifts: the 
gold being a fit present to a king such as Jesus 
was to be ; the frankincense was suitable for the 
worship which was everywhere to be offered in 
his name; and the myrrh foretokened the em- 
balming of his body given for the world's re- 
demption. An old Latin hjmm sums this all up 
as follows : — 

"Aurea nascenti fuderimt mmiera regi, 
Thura dedere Deo, m3-rrhamqne tribuere sepulto." 

In the old world paintings the Magi are some- 
times pictured with crowns on their heads ; but 
more frequently they are represented as wearing 



THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 63 

oriental turbans. Camels and elephants are oc- 
casionally introduced as hints of the far East. 
Cologne boasts of the honor of possessing their 
bones ; and one of the penances of a visit to that 
fragrant city is the hearing an old cicerone drawl 
out the story of the translation of these bones to 
the banks of the Rhine. 

Should it be asked, How was it that those 
heathen Magi had any correct ideas of the future 
destiny of this infant ? an answer was always near 
at hand. Of course it was said that they were 
supernaturally inspired. Even Olshausen says, 
'' These Magi were partly inspired." Kenrick, 
the American editor of Olshausen, thinks this is 
hardly enough, and adds in a note, '' That the 
visit of these Magi was accompanied, perhaps, 
or followed, by the germs of a sincere faith, can- 
not be doubted." The "perhaps" cannot be 
doubted. 

And then we read, " they fell down and wor- 
shipped him." Behold another wonder. These 
wise men from the East worship Jehovah two 
weeks old ! But even Olshausen was shocked 
at this, and adds, " We must not by any means 
ascribe to the Magi any doctrinal ideas of the 
divinity of Jesus Christ ; but only a dim concep- 



64 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

tion of the divine power accompanying and rest- 
ing on him. We may say they worshipped God 
who had made this child for salvation to them 
also ; but not the child." 

And yet the expression in Matthew is, " they 
worshipped Azm," the child ; and why did not 
Olshausen say that the original is Trpao-eKuVy^frav, 
which means show respect^ and has no more to do 
with worship, in our modern sense of the word, 
than had their descending from their camels and 
elephants. 

After this glance at the wonderful mysteries 
and legends connected with St. Matthew's story, 
the reader will think it a great downfall to the 
probable facts of the case, in which, as Neander 
says, " it is not necessary to suppose that any 
miracle was wrought." 

A company of merchants carrying with them 
the articles in common traffic between the East 
on the one side, and Judea and Egypt on the 
other, and travelling, as was common in that hot 
country, in the cool of the evening, noticed a star 
which, from the clearness of the air or some as- 
pect of the planets, they had never seen shine so 
brilliantly. In that age every unusual sight was 
a sign of something. What did that star mean ? 



THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 65 

Passing near Bethlehem, some rumor, perhaps 
from the shepherds before named, of the birth of 
Mary's son, who, as they were told, might be 
king of the Jews, reached their ears. Here, then, 
was the meaning of the star. If the Jews were 
to have a new king they would do homage to 
him, to propitiate his future protection. That 
the star was no guide to them is evident from the 
fact that, on arriving at Jerusalem, they had to 
ask where the birth of the new king took place, 
— an inquiry which naturally awakened great 
surprise at Herod's court. 

Starting on their way to Bethlehem, they were 
rejoiced to see that same planet shining clearly 
in the heavens, which, as they doubted not, was 
" his star," the star of the infant king. In their 
compliments to the mother they named the in- 
cident of the star, which little story she remem- 
bered, and treasured among her domestic tradi- 
tions ; but it was altogether too unimportant for 
use with anybody else. 

Looking back now upon all these narratives, 

and tracing them to their probable humble origin, 

we would ask, Do we destroy their significance ? 

We know that many will think we do, and will 

5 



66 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

add, that we eviscerate the Gospels, strip them 
of their divine element, and reduce everything 
to the plane of naturalism. 

But we think that the plane of naturalism is 
God's plane, and it does not seem less divine be- 
cause it is natural. In these simple events we 
think we may see the divine hand quite as plainly 
as in the sun and moon circling round a cradle 
in Bethlehem. Is it not possible to believe these 
natural incidents with a depth and sincerity of 
faith that cannot be accorded to this last named 
legend, nor to anything like it ? 

Who is prepared to take the ground that a 
lowly origin diminishes the importance of a grand 
result? The heavenly poem of the birth of 
Jesus, sung all the world over, is it not a heav- 
enly poem still, even if we know out of what 
simple elements it took its rise? If Dante's "Di- 
vina Commedia" originated, as Florentine tradi- 
tion saj^s, in some spite against that city, is it not 
the majestic and Avonderful poem of the ages for 
all that ? If John Robinson and Elder Brewster 
got up the expedition to America through some 
petty misunderstanding with a church in Leyden, 
is not the settlement of the Plymouth Pilgrims 
a grand event in history for all that ? May not 



THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 67 

God's gracious and benignant providence come 
into connection with human events at any stage 
of their progress, and in the way He shall judge 
best ? Have we a right to ask that the moment 
of his contact with them shall be signalized by 
such prodigies as to our poor eyes may seem most 
fitting ? 

There has been by no means a unity of opinion 
as to the precise time when the divine first min- 
gled with the human element in Jesus. Some 
have named the moment of his baptism, as did 
Ceriuthus and Basilides, and Theodotus of By- 
zantium ; some, that of his birth; some, that of 
the salutation of Mary and Elizabeth ; some, that 
of his resurrection ; and some, apparently to shut 
off all curiosity on this point, have held to an 
'' eternal generation," whatever that may mean. 
Adam Clarke appears to know more about tliis 
matter than any one els^, for he says, in his 
'' Commentary," that he is '' firmly established 
in the opinion that the rudiments of the human 
nature of Christ were a real creation in the womb 
of the virgin," and that Jesus was there filled 
with the Holy Ghost. 

Amid all tliis diversity of opinion on a subject 
where it is the height of folly to pretend to know 



68 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

anything, is it not better to abide by the plain 
words of Scripture, which tell us that Jesus was 
born like a human being, from a natural father 
and mother, that he grew up like other children, 
"increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor 
with God and man," and received in some period 
of his life, we know not when or how, but in har- 
mony with the normal action of his own mental 
and spiritual nature, that spirit which was given 
to him '' without measure," and by which he be- 
came fitted for the service he rendered to man- 
kind? 

But it maj^be said that this bald and belittling 
exegesis does not at all meet the sympathies of 
the universal human heart, and the most obvious 
aspects of the case. This may be admitted. But 
the inquiry is still open whether these " sym- 
pathies " be well founded, and whether the 
" obvious aspect " is not made such by tradition. 
Our object has not been to find something that 
will fill the measure of wonder that has been en- 
larged through long ages of ignorance and credu- 
lity, but humbly to suggest a possible explana- 
tion of facts which, at the time, were regarded 
as very simple and not of great importance, but 
which have since been clothed with the sublimest 
significance. 



THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 69 

Nor let any one regard it as a strange thing 
that such wonderful interpretations should have 
been put upon the records of Christ's birth. In 
past ages men had no other way of marking 
their sense of something extraordinarj^ in any 
one, than by the description of extraordinary 
portents. Thus both Isaac and John the Baptist 
w^ere said^ to be miraculously conceived. The 
Indian Buddha, it was believed, was born of the 
virgin Mai a. Foh, the god of the Chinese, and 
Shaka, the god of Thibet, were born of virgins. 
Romulus, it w^as said, had a human mother, and a 
god for his father. Plato was begotten by Apollo. 
Hercules was a son of Jupiter. The mother of 
Alexander the Great saw in her sleep, just before 
the birth of her son, a thunderbolt fall upon her 
body. The mother of Pericles dreamed that she 
was to give birth to a lion. Here are but a few 
examples of natal prodigies. 

All this is popular language, to express, in 
the absence of abstract terms and nicely shaded 
meanings, the idea of something wonderful. Had 
the career pf Washington fallen into the world's 
history centuries ago, we might have had stories 
that the chamber of his birth was illuminated 
with a preternatural light. But we can describe 



70 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

his greatness without the aid of prodigy. Prodigy 
would not make his patriotism, and wisdom, and 
disinterestedness seem anj^ greater. We judge 
him by his life. So the life of Jesus describes 
him to us, and stamps him as the Son of God 
and Saviour of the world. 

And the simple story of his life may give us a 
far higher idea of him than is necessarily implied 
by all the wonders and prodigies attributed to his 
birth. We see that he who was first regarded 
merely as the king of Israel has become the 
Guide and Consoler of humanity ; and they who 
dwelt so much on the fact of the resurrection of 
his body knew little of the power of that word 
which would in time roll away the stone from 
every sepulchre in the w^orld. 

" J&us a ete le Messie et a vaincu la mort dans 
un sens bien plus reel que celui auquel s'etaient 
attaches les premiers chretiens. Ceux-ci ne voy- 
aient en lui que le roi d'Israel, et il est devenu 
le sauveur et le consolateur des hommes. lis 
s'arretaient a la resurrection du corps, et ils 
n'avaient aacune idee de la puissance avec la- 
quelle la parole de leur maitre allait briser la 
pierre au sepulchre pour se repandre sur la face 
du monde." ^ 

^ Scherer, Mdanges d'Histoire Roligieuse, 



THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 71 

But God's plan, as unfolded in the sublime 
march of centuries, is often misunderstood and 
misrepresented by the philosophy or passions of 
a particular age ; and we must now see what 
theories the age succeeding that of the apostles 
invented. 



CHAPTER V. 

AFTER THEORIES. 

T F we have suggested a probable explanation of 
the account of the birth of Jesus, the question 
will naturally arise, How came it to be so mis-» 
represented ? In what way was a knowledge of 
his natural birth lost to the world ? In what way 
came the history to be enveloped with the prod- 
igies which are still believed ? 

At the end of a preceding chapter it was said 
that we all know how, and when, and where this 
misinterpretation of the record took place : and 
it is our purpose now to show this. The sub- 
ject requires some details of ecclesiastical history. 
Remembering how tedious these are to most 
readers, we shall select only a few of the most 
interesting points, and shall dismiss them with 
all the brevity compatible with a clear statement 
of the case. 

No one can give even a brief glance into the 
histor}^ of the early ages of the Christian Church 



AFTER THEORIES. 73 

without seeing that there were causes then at 
work to lead to new and high strained theories 
about the person of Christ, and as a consequence 
to ascribe peculiar honor to his mother. 

1. The first was what was called the offense of 
the cross. That the founder of their religion had 
suffered an ignominious death was perpetually 
thrown into the face of the first Christians. It 
had been cast as a reproach to St. Paul ; but St. 
Paul did not attempt to evade or mitigate the 
charge. No high-sounding words, such as soon 
came into fashion, did he use to cover up the 
odium of the cross, or to give a factitious splen- 
dor to the sacrifice there made. With him it was 
Jesus of Nazareth, '' made of a woman,'' Gala- 
tians iv. 4; ^'the man Christ Jesus," 1 Timothy 
ii. 5, who suffered in our behalf; and he gloried 
in the cross of Christ, and determined to '^know 
nothing but Jesus and him crucified." 

Would that his successors had done so! But 
they set to work to blunt the edge of this charge 
by their representations of the person of him 
who was crucified. The greater his dignity, the 
more the cross was invested with interest. This 
was their reasoning ; but it only showed their in- 
ability to penetrate to the true greatness of Christ. 



74 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

That a superhuman being could meet death 
with calm self-sacrifice, was not the fact that cov- 
ered the cross with its transcendent glory. The 
spiritual significance of the cross lies in the truth 
that human weakness there found an almighty 
strength and support. Accordingly St. Paul 
knew nothing but Jesus and him crucified. But 
some of his successors knew a great deal more 
than that. It is not long before we find the ex- 
pressions, God himself suffered, God himself was 
crucified, God himself died. Texts of Scripture 
were strangely perverted to give a color to these 
astounding representations, which found some 
support in Indian incarnations, and Olympian 
mythology. 

If Jesus were God, how could mortal par- 
ents give him birth ? The exigency demanded 
some other explanation. These artless narratives 
that took their shape from peculiarities of He- 
brew phraseology, invited mystic interpretations. 
These led to the ascription to Mary of a super- 
human relation. She became the Queen of 
Heaven and the object of prayer. 

2. The transference of Christianity to lands 
where the real meaning of its birth-phrases was 
little understood helped on this tendency. The 



AFTER THEORIES. 75 

overthrow of Jerusalem in the year 70, after one 
of the most awful sieges recorded in history, 
drove away the Christian Church from '' the 
mother of us all," and foreign cities became the 
centres from which the Gospel radiated. 

Who of us has adequately considered what 
must have been the natural effect of taking the 
religion from its cradle, from the habits of 
thought and expression where it had its rise, and 
planting it under new skies, and amid foreign 
tendencies and customs and speech ? It was in- 
evitable that other elements should mingle with 
it, and that it should receive a deep impress from 
the place to which it was transferred. 

The point is so obvious that it hardly needs 
illustration ; but if we suppose that a new sys- 
tem of philosophy should spring up in Boston, 
and should be set forth, not in the language of 
the learned, but in the common phrases, the 
idioms, the proverbs, the traditional expressions 
peculiar to New England, who does not see that, 
if it should be transplanted to another land, and 
other people, a thousand miles distant, it would 
naturally be interpreted by the speech, the spirit, 
the traditions of the new place, and would neces- 
sarily be set forth in a light different in many 



76 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

respects from what it had in Boston ? We must 
interpret history by what we know of human 
nature, and of the inevitable effect of diverse 
ideas and culture. 

It is of much interest in this connection to 
mark the fact that the farther the Gospel trav- 
eled from the influence of its home, the more its 
records were misunderstood. The great names 
in Church history which have made Antioch, 
Cappadocia, Ephesus, Constantinople, so cele- 
brated, were arrayed against the wild specula- 
tions to which Alexandria in Egypt gave birth. 
Mosheim, in his '^ Historical Commentaries on 
the State of Christianity during the first Three 
Hundred and Twenty-five Years of the Christian 
Era," says, '' Nearly all those corruptions by 
which, in the second and subsequent centuries, 
Christianity was disfigured, and its pristine sim- 
plicity and innocence were almost wholly de- 
faced, had their origin in Egypt, and were thence 
communicated to other churches." ^ 

Let us mark, also, another suggestive fact, 
namely, that on the subject of the person of 
Christ the fundamental difi^erence between the 
northern and southern side of the Mediterranean 

1 Murdock's Mosheim, vol. i., p. 369. 



AFTER THEORIES. 77 

was, as is stated in the words of Neander, that 
the latter believed that " God became a man, 
while the former believed that God exerted an 
influence on a man." The profound significance 
of this discrimination will arrest the attention of 
the reader. 1 

Neander proceeds still farther to define the 
theological speculations of the third and fourth 
centuries, by saying that it was the aim of the 
Syrian divines to find '' in the union of God with 
man in Christ something analogous to the re- 
lation of God to rational beings generally ; to find 
a point of comparison between the being of God 
in Christ and the being of God in believers ; " 

1 See Neander, Boston edition, vol. ii., p. 435. Dupin had 
before pointed out the same difference between the Syrian and 
Egyptian churches. He says : " Les Orientaux se sont toujours 
plus appliques a marquer la distinction des deux natures en 
Jesus-Christ que leur intime union, au lieu que les Egyptiens se 
sont plus attaches a parler de leur union que de leur distinction.*' 
French edition, a^oI. ii., p. 28. 

While this book has been under preparation I have used both 
the original French edition of Dupin, entitled Nouvelle Blhlio- 
theque des Auteurs Ecdesiastigues, Mons, 1681, and an English 
translation published in London, 1692. My quotations in French 
are from the former; when in English they are from the latter 
work. I have great respect for the candor of Diipin. He was 
of the Romish Church, and wrote long prior to the controversies 
which at the present time bias our minds. 



78 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

while, on the other hand, as he adds, " the supra- 
rational and supernatural was precisely that for 
which the Alexandrian theology chiefly insisted. 
The ineffable, incomprehensible, transcendent 
mystery consisted in this very thing, that divine 
omniscience and human ignorance, human sensi- 
bility, and suffering and divine exemption from 
suffering, and in general divine and human at- 
tributes, coexisted in one and the same Christ." 
Vol. ii., p. 445. 

If we think that this was equivalent to saying 
that a square and a circle have the same form, 
we can hardly b^ surprised that here in Alex- 
andria should be coined the expression which 
made such a strife in those ages, that the Virgin 
Mary was OeoroKo^, that is, the Mother of God. 

Mary, the Mother of God ? Who can imagine 
that such an expression should be found in the 
writings of the apostles ? It is evident that 
they felt no special interest in her ; not indeed 
so much as we might think they should have 
felt. After Jesus on the cross had commended 
her to the care of John, and the beloved dis- 
ciple had taken her, as we are told in John xix. 
27, " to his own home," not one word is said of 
her in the Gospels, nor in the sermons of the 



AFTER THEORIES. 79 

first preachers of Christianity, nor in the epistles 
that were sent to the churches. The one only 
place where she is even named is in the list of 
believers in Christ that assembled in the upper 
room after his crucifixion, and here she is named 
as '' the mother of Jesus," and is included '' with 
the women." Acts i. 14. 

We have other most interesting and precious 
remains of the first followers of Jesus. I refer 
to the Roman catacombs. Every one knows the 
story about them. Those dismal subterranean 
abodes to which the persecuted Christians fled, 
where they lived till the time of peril had passed, 
where they buried their dead, and rudely carved 
many Christian emblems, show us who and what 
were the historical figures of chief interest to 
those who had been driven to " dens and caves of 
the earth." 

There they engraved the form of Christ a^ the 
Good Shepherd, and the fish, the Greek word of 
which, tx^^S contained the initials so dear to 
them (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour), and 
the anchor, emblem of their hope and trust, 
and the ship, which represented the Church, to 
bear them safely over all the storms of life. 
Thousands of these inscriptions have been care- 



80 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

fully removed from the dark and damp cata- 
combs, and are now inserted in the walls of a 
long corridor in the Vatican, and few objects in 
Rome are more interesting than the " Lapidary 
Gallery." 

But no image of Mary is there. Pictures of 
the Virgin and Child are of far later date. The 
effigies of some Christian matron, found on sar- 
cophagi and in the catacombs, have been claimed 
by papists as representations of the mother of 
Jesus ; but in the light of the ecclesiastical lit- 
erature of the first centuries, the claim is pre- 
posterous. Not before the fifth century did art 
multiply images of the Virgin and Child.^ 
There is reason to think that such images orig- 
inated in Egypt, as in some of the oldest statues 
of the virgin she is represented as being black, 
in imitation, as is supposed, of the black Egyp- 
tian Isis, who, before the times of Christianity, 
was worshiped as nursing a child. What would 
those devout souls of the catacombs have thought 
of the expression, Mary the Mother of God., the 
Queen of Heaven., the proper object of prayer ? 

1 Maitland, in his Church in the Catacombs, says : " It is a fact 
notorious to every one conversant with ecclesiastical history, that 
the Virgin Mary was scarcely noticed in writings, paintings, or 
sculptures, till late in the fourth century/' Page 332. 



AFTER THEORIES. 81 

Let US ask a still more interesting question, 
What would the first Christians in the mother 
Church at Jerusalem have thought of this ? We 
are not without means of answering that ques- 
tion. Though the destruction of Jerusalem dioye 
the Christian Church to make settlements in for- 
eign cities, it did not expel from Judea all the 
followers of Christ. A body of them remained. 
A little town beyond the Jordan, called Pella, 
received many of them ; and they and their scat- 
tered brethren were known under the name of 
Ebionites, from the fact of their poverty, the 
Hebrew word ]"'^i:S, Eboon^ meaning poor. What 
chiefly distinguished them was their belief that 
the Mosaic system had not been entirely abro- 
gated by Christ, many rites of which they con- 
tinued to observe. Hence they were sometimes 
called Judaizers, and were classed as heretics. 

It seems not improbable that they might know 
far better than the Alexandrian mystics what 
the gospel account of Christ's birth really meant. 
At any rate, it is certain that they did not be- 
lieve in his miraculous conception as it was in- 
terpreted in Egypt, and continues to be inter- 
preted to this day. They had a Hebrew copy 
of the Gospel, in which the family memoirs of 



82 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

Zacliarias, and of Joseph and Mary, were left 
out. The fact which we have here signalized, 
namely, that they did not believe in the super- 
natural birth of Jesus, but accounted him as the 
son* of Joseph and Mary, is admitted by all ec- 
clesiastical historians ; and the significance of this 
fact will not escape the notice of any attentive 
reader.! 

3. The prevalence of the Manichean philosophy 
was another cause that aided the dogma of the 
miraculous birth of Christ. This was a branch 
of that Gnostic system which ascribed all evil to 
matter. Spirit and matter were regarded as the 
two antagonistic principles of the universe. Sin 

1 Hagenbach says in his History of Doctrines, vol. i., p. 180, 
that some of the Ebionites believed that a higher power rested on 
Christ which made him rank with Adam, Enoch, and Moses, 
and this was the highest conception that they had of him. Mos- 
heim's words are as follows: "Although they [the Ebionites] 
held our Saviour Jesus Christ in great veneration as a divine 
legate or prophet, tiiey would not admit that any miraculous cir- 
cumstances attended his birth, but maintained that he was the 
natural son of Joseph, begotten according to that law by which 
all other mortals are produced." 

Milman says that the Ebionites not only maintained that Christ 
was born in the natural way, but affirmed that such was " the 
unbroken tradition of the Church from the apostles to their own 
day." See Latin Christianity, vol. i., p. 40. 



AFTER THEORIES. 83 

had a self-subsistent existence in matter. As 
man is allied to matter by his body, he will find 
his perfection only by mortifying, starving, and 
scourging it. Here was the origin both of monk- 
ish asceticism, and of that dualism, God and Nat- 
ure, which has been transmitted down to our day. 
Under this system it became a necessity to show 
that Christ's sinlessness came from the fact that 
he had no connection with matter. 

Never was the force of theory more signally 
illustrated. Some, like the Docetse, taught that 
Christ had a body only in appearance. Only a 
phantom had been born and crucified. It had 
none of the substance of which our bodies are 
composed. It was incapable alike of sin and of 
suffering. It was against this opinion that St. 
John leveled some of his most pointed sentences, 
condemning those who had denied that Christ 
had come in the fleshy and calling such antichrist. 
See 1 John iv. 3. 

Others maintained that Christ had a real body, 
but it was not composed of common fleshly mat- 
ter; it was not derived from Mary; it was fash- 
ioned from subtle and celestial materials ; it was 
put together in heaven, according to the belief of 
Marcion ; and it passed through the body of 



84 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 

Mary, as the Bardesanists maintained, as a beam 
of light passes through glass, or as water passes 
through a pipe. The fourth and fifth centuries 
abounded with edifying speculations of this kind, 
and all these served still more to shape a theology 
which removed Jesus from any natural alliance 
with humanity. 

4. A fourth cause which contributed to this 
result was certain metaphysical speculations as to 
the origin of souls. A subject of which a human 
being has no knowledge, and can have none ex- 
cept by express revelation, was then treated as if 
it were all as well understood as the pedigree of 
one's father, and as if there must be something 
culpable in dissent. 

The historian Gibbon, in a note to his forty- 
seventh chapter, enumerates the four different 
opinions that have prevailed : 1. That souls are 
eternal and divine. 2. That they are created in 
a separate state of existence before their union 
with the body. 3. That each soul is created and 
embodied in the moment of conception. 4. That 
souls are propagated from the original stock of 
Adam, who contained in himself the spiritual as 
well as the corporeal seed of his posterity. 

This last opinion took root in the age we are 



AFTER THEORIES. 85 

now considering. Neander gives TertuUian the 
honor of its paternity, and refers to him as that 
'' great church teacher who in many respects 
may be regarded as the forerunner of Augus- 
tine ; " and he adds that it was TertuUian's be- 
lief " that our first parent bore within him the 
undeveloped germ of all mankind; that the soul 
of the first man was the fountain-head of all hu- 
man souls, and that all the varieties of individual 
human nature are but different manifestations of 
that one spiritual substance. Hence the whole 
race became corrupted in its original father, and 
sinfulness is propagated at the same time with 
souls." 1 

Even if there be the least plausibility in this 
hypothesis, still it might be asked how was Christ 
free from all hereditary taint if he derived his 
being through a human mother ? And here came 
in another assumption. It was maintained that 
the generative power belongs exclusively to the 
father, the mother having only a subordinate part 
in the production of children. See Lecky's " His- 
tory of Morals," vol. ii., p. 296, who says that we 
find this notion also among the old Greek writers, 
for Euripides puts it into the mouth of Apollo in 

1 Neander, vol. l.,p. 615. 



86 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

the *^' Eumenides." St. Thomas Aquinas believed 
it, and hence argued that we ought to love our 
fathers more than our mothers. But human af- 
fections do not always obey this logic. 

Reasoning then precisely as some theologians 
reason still, it was contended that if Jesus had 
been a son of Joseph he would have inherited the 
sin of Adam. In all the resources of omnipotence 
God had no other way of cutting off that sinful 
connection except by preventing Joseph's cooper- 
ation. This was arguing in rather a high strain, 
and assuming to know much about the resources 
of omnipotence. But it answered its purpose, 
and we shall see that some theologians talk in the 
sam.B style now. 

Some of the Schoolmen framed another ingen- 
ious theory. They supposed there was a double 
conception, which we find thus described by Bun- 
sen : "• First a conception by which the body was 
formed, and second that which occurs at the end 
of forty days when the soul is added to it. The 
former is called the active, the latter the passive 
conception. The first took place with Mary in 
the same manner as with all other human beings ; 
but in the moment of the latter, God delivered 



AFTEK THEORIES. 87 

the soul that was entering the womb from orig- 
inal sin by a special miracle." ^ 

All these baseless hypotheses had one object in 
view. The aim was to shut out Jesus from any 
organic connection with humanity ; and it was no 
matter how fanciful and extravagant the opinion 
might be if only it prepared the way for an ad- 
mission of a supernatural birth. 

5. That birth found a fifth support in the ris- 
ing clamor in favor of celibacy. All through the 
Old Testament ages, marriage was in such esteem 
that one wife did not satisfy the sense of its 
value. The command at the creation to be fruit- 
ful and multiply was well remembered, and the 
Hebrew spirit uttered itself in the words of 
Psalm cxxvii. 3, " Lo children are an heritage of 
the Lord ; happy is the man that hath his quiver 
full of them." Wedlock was a pure and holy 
state with Jewish priests and the first Christian 
pastors. In the Epistle to the Hebrews xiii. 4, 
marriage is called "' honorable in all ; " and in 
the First Epistle to Timothy iv. 3, among the 
doctrines of devils which would come in, in the 
latter times, St. Paul names this, " forbidding to 
marry." 

1 Bunsen's God in History, vol. iii., p. 158. 



88 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

As late as the beginning of the fourth century 
St. Jerome called the whole book of Solomon's 
Song an indubitable proof in favor of marriage, 
and he names bishops who would ordain none 
but married men. St. Augustine wrote a trea- 
tise " De Bono Conjugale," denying that celibacy 
had any special merit of itself, though praising it 
when chosen in a right spirit ; and Jovinian of 
Yerona, whom Neander calls the Protestant of 
the fifth century, set himself against the frenzy 
of his times, and defended the honorableness and 
desirableness of marriage. 

If any one is curious to know how an opinion 
in favor of celibacy sprung up, and what con- 
nection it had with various heathen superstitions, 
with Manichean speculations, and metaphj^sical 
notions about the origin of ^ouls, he may find 
much light in the '' Historical Sketch of Sacer- 
dotal Celibacy," by Henry C. Lea, Philadelphia, 
1867, a learned and thorough work, to which we 
have been indebted. 

Celibacy was at first severely denounced by 
the Church. The Apostolical Constitutions prob- 
ably reflected the spirit of their times, and with 
an unexpected degree of good sense, they said, 
'' Nam nee lemtimus concubitus, nee cubile, nee 



AFTER THEORIES. 89 

sanguinis fluxus, nee noeturna poUutio, potest 
hominis naturam contaminare, vel spiritum sanc- 
tum auferre ; sed sola impietas et actio injusta." 
And again, "• Nuptae igitur honestse et comraen- 
dabiles sunt, ipsaque liberorum procreatio piira 
est, nihil enim mali est in bono." 

Pope Syricus, A. D. 385, was the first to enjoin 
celibacy, asking, '' Can the Spirit dwell in any 
other than holy bodies ? " as though, says Ne- 
ander, ^' true holiness is incompatible with mar- 
riage." Twenty years after this, Pope Innocent 
I. decreed that all married priests should be de- 
prived of office. Success could attend such steps 
only by the most extravagant laudations of the 
virtue of the single state, and Cyprian got up 
a mathematical comparison of it to martyrdom, 
which he rated at one hundred and celibacy at 
sixty ; and Chrysostom pronounced virginity as 
much superior to marriage as heaven is to earth, 
or as angels are to men. 

To support the opinion in favor of perpetual 
virginity resort was also had to wondei-s revealed 
from the spiritual world ; and it is in this age 
that occurred, it is said, the incident of St. Ju- 
lian and St. Basilissa, which we find reported as 
follows in one of the old legends of the Church : 



90 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 

Forced by his parents to take a spouse, Julian 
was inspired by God to select Basilissa, who was 
of the same mind as himself, namely, that after 
marriage they would live only as the angels in 
heaven. On the nuptial night Jesus Christ ap- 
peared to the holy couple, and he and his august 
mother, escorted by a legion of virgins, filled 
the chamber with the celestial light of their 
presence, and with the odor of lilies and roses, 
though it was midwinter, and brought two golden 
crowns, and said, '' Victory to you, Julian ; vic- 
tory to you, Basilissa!. Exalted shall be "your 
place in heaven, grand shall be your glory, bril- 
liant shall be your crowns ! " And the Church 
recognized and proclaimed the triumph by giv- 
ing the title of saints to these two virgin souls. 

But even with all these, mathematics, rhetoric, 
and fable, the papal decrees were a failure. The 
well-known lines of Horace, about trying to ex- 
pel nature, must have often come to mind.^ For 
six or eight centuries the subject was a fruitful 
source of trouble. If the reader should ever 
turn over the pages of Dupin's '' Ecclesiastical 

1 "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret, 

Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.'* 

A terrible meaning must have been often found in these lines. 



AFTER THEORIES. 91 

History," where are summaries of the decisions 
of all the leading Church Councils, he will get a 
vivid idea of the vast amount of discussion that 
must have been given to this subject. 

'' This overstrained demand on the virtue, not 
of individuals in a high state of enthusiasm, but 
of a whole class of men ; this strife with nature 
in that which, in its irregular and lawless in- 
dulgence, is the source of so many evils and so 
much misery, in its more moderate and legal 
form is the parent of the purest affections and 
the holiest charities ; this isolation from those 
social ties, which, if at times they might draw 
them from total dedication to their sacred duties, 
in general would, by their tending to soften and 
humanize, be the best school for the gentle and 
affectionate discharge of those duties ; this en- 
forcement of the celibacy of the clergy was not 
slow in producing its inevitable evils. Simul- 
taneously with the sterner condemnation of mar- 
riage, or at least the exaggerated praises of chas- 
tity, we hear the solemn denunciations of the 
law against those secret evasions by which the 
clergy endeavored to obtain the fame without 
the practice of celibacy, — to enjoy some of the 
pleasures without the crime of marriage. From 



92 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

the middle of the third century, in which the 
growing aversion to the marriage of the clergy 
begins to appear, we find the " sub-introduced " 
females constantly proscribed. The intimate 
union of the priest with a young, often a beau- 
tiful, female, who still passed to the world under 
the name of a virgin, and was called by the priest 
hj the unsuspected name of a sister, seems, from 
the strong and reiterated language of Jerome, 
Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and others, to 
have been almost general." ^ 

Not often was the controversy redeemed by 
such gleams of good sense as St. Ulric showed, 
who, in 962, when a council was held at Augs- 
burg which tried to enforce celibacy, addressed 
a long letter to the pope, Agapetus II., in which 
he said : " How much more obnoxious to divine 
wrath are the promiscuous and nameless crimes 
indulged in by those who would enforce celib- 
acy, than the chaste and single marriages of the 
clergy ; " and then when, alluding to the " vio- 
lent distortion of the sacred texts by those who 
sought authority to justify the laws," he not un- 
happily characterized it as " straining the breast 
1 Milman's History of Christianity , book iv., chapter 1. 



AFTER THEORIES. 93 

of Scripture until it yielded blood instead of 
milk." 1 

Let us pass over the petitions sent by laymen 
begging that the clergy might be allowed to 
ruarry, as this might protect the purity of house- 
holds committed to their spiritual charge ; as 
also the secular consideration that favored celib- 
acy, namely, the vast sums of money bequeathed 
to the Church for religious uses, but squandered 
by the clergy on their children. The Church, it 
Avas believed, v^^ould be richer if the clergy " were 
relieved of the cares of paternity," to adopt the 
euphemism of those times. 

It is a sad history, and a disgraceful history, 
and the struggle is a sad and disgraceful one in 
the Romish Church to this day. How fruitful 
of warning to those who would set themselves in 
array against the laws of our nature ! Tlie con- 
nection of this subject with the point under 
discussion lies in the fact, that in all this long 
and scandalous controversy, the virginity of the 
mother of Christ, and the supposed continence 
of Joseph, were matters of unceasing laudation : 
and all this helped to fasten upon the accounts of 

1 Lea's Sacerdotal Celibacy , p. 153.' 



94 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

the birth of Jesus the interpretations which have 
been handed down to this day. 

And now comes the fight. For fight there was 
between the more moderate and more scriptural 
interpretations of the north of the Mediterra- 
nean, and the fiery and impetuous fanaticism of 
Alexandria. In no other struggle in all Chris- 
tian history have theological odium, and secta- 
rian hot-headedness, and partisan diplomacy, and 
blood-thirsty measures made a more striking dis- 
plaj^. Some of the chief points in this pictur- 
esque but shameful controversy we shall present 
in the next chapter. As we have now seen by 
what means the primitive records of Christ's 
birth came to be overlaid bj^ false interpretations, 
so we shall next mark how these interpretations 
were forced into the line of Christian tradition, 
and were established as the orthodoxy of the 
Church. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FIGHT. 

fTIHE difference in opinion, on the subject of 
-*- the nature of Christ, between the northern 
and southern side of the Mediterranean, has 
been summed up generally by Neander, in words 
which we have quoted in a former chapter, as 
follows : The Syrian churches held that God 
exerted an influence on a man ; the Egyptian 
churches held that God became a man. 

Of course it will be understood that the Syr- 
ian theologians explained themselves in divers 
manners, and had themselves more or less de- 
parted from the simplicity of the sacred writers, 
w4io contented themselves with calling Jesus the 
Son of God, the promised Messiah, the Sent of 
the Father, the Saviour of the world ; while, in 
the fifth century, there was everywhere a dispo- 
sition to go beyond these words, — a prurient 
desire to pry into the nature of Christ, and to 
apply to him high-sounding titles. This tend- 



96 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

ency had been apparent for a hundred years, 
and had been signally displayed in the Council 
at Nice in 325, when there had been a fierce and 
successful struggle to supplant the simplicity of 
the evangelical statements by mysterious meta- 
physical subtleties. 

But the excess to which the Egyptian theo- 
logians carried this tendency was at length in- 
tolerably^ revolting to the more sober thouglit of 
the Syrian Christians ; and when, in Alexandria, 
was applied to the Virgin Mary the expression 
6^€OTo/co?, Mother of God, it was like casting a fire- 
brand into an inflammable mass. Let us mark 
some of the circumstances which conspired to 
kindle the flames that soon raged. 

Alexandria was then one of the most promi- 
nent cities of the world. Founded by Alexander 
the Great 332 B. c, its advantageous position 
at the mouth of the Nile gave it a rapid growth, 
an early commercial importance, and a popula- 
tion at one time surpassing that of Rome. His- 
tory tells us of its immense trade between Eu- 
rope and the far East, — a trade afterwards di- 
verted by the discovery of the passage round the 
Cape of Good Hope, but in our times regained, 
at least in part, by the construction of the Suez 
Canal. 



THE FIGHT. 97 

But we are more interested in its then multi- 
form intellectual culture. It became the home 
of scholars and disputants from all parts of the 
world, and Egyptian mysteries, and Greek soph- 
ism, and Jewish theocracy, and Persian phi- 
losophy, and Indian subtleties, strove for the 
mastery in the fervid life favored by the mer- 
curial spirit of the people and the place. Here 
the Old Testament had been translated from the 
Hebrew into Greek, in the version known as the 
Septuagint ; here were the great libraries so 
famous in history ; and here flourished the men 
whose names make such a figure in ecclesiastical 
writings, — Philo, Porphyry, Clement, Origen, 
Athanasius, Cyril. 

What would become of the religion of Jesus 
when thrown into that seething Alexandrian 
cauldron ? Christianity must have something 
more mysterious, incomprehensible, than any 
other system if it would there gain favor. The 
obscure origin of its founder was an offense in 
the eyes of ambitious sectarists. But those rec- 
ords of his birth had great capabilities. Some- 
thing might be made out of them more won- 
derful than Grecian mythology or Indian incar- 
nations could parallel. 
7 



98 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

It seems probable that a peculiar notion of the 
Egyptian philosophers here rendered some aid. 
Plutarch tells us, in his life of Numa, that 'Hhe 
wise Egyptians held that it may be possible for a 
divine spirit so to apply itself to the nature of 
a woman as to imbreed in her the first begin- 
nings of generation," without any intercourse 
with man. Here may have been the genetic 
idea of the whole Alexandrian scheme, and of 
the theology thence derived. 

The tone of mind then prevailing at Alex- 
andria was one which has shown itself in many 
ages, and may be recognized at this present time 
among the Ritualists in England, and those in 
other places who sympathize with them. The 
more wonderful and incomprehensible the dog- 
mas and rites of religion are made, the more 
it suits the taste to which we refer. And this 
taste must continually have something new to 
feed it, and hence there is a rapid progress in ex- 
travagance. To those who renounce the guide of 
the judgment, and appeal wholly to a love of the 
marvelous, learning is nothing but a hindrance, 
common sense a carnal intruder, and the man of 
empty brain, with lighted candles and sing-song 
tone, is as good as anybody, on a level with 



THE FIGHT. 99 

well-furnished and enlightened minds, — perhaps 
a little better, for there is no suspicion that he 
has wit enough to see the hollow delusion. 

In his Lectures on " Ecclesiastical History," 
Dr. Campbell says : " To men of shallow under- 
standing, theological paradoxes afford a pleasure 
not unlike that which is derived from being 
present at the wonderful feats of jugglers. In 
these, by mere sleight of hand, one appears to 
do what is impossible to be done ; and in those, 
by mere sleight of tongue (in which the judg- 
ment has no part), an appearance of meaning 
and consistency is given to terms the most self- 
contradictory, and the incredible seems to be 
rendered worthy of belief. To set fools a- staring 
is alike the aim of both. Of the two kinds of 
artifice, the juggler's and the sophist's, the former 
is much the more harmless." 

The patriarch of Alexandria, at the time to 
which we now come, was Cyril, a man of unfail- 
ing cunning and tact, united to boundless am- 
bition, and prompt and arrogant force. He had 
been elevated to the episcopal throne in 412, and 
had exercised with a high hand the large tem- 
poral powers which his position gave him. His 
character will come out with sufficient distinct- 



100 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 

ness. At the head of a fanatical rabble he as- 
sailed the quarter of the city assigned to the 
Je^Ys, then numbering forty thousand souls, who 
had there long lived in peace. Their synagogues 
he tore down, and their goods he gave to the 
plunder of his soldiers. ^ 

His connection with the thrilling fate of the 
beautiful and accomplished Hypatia has often 
been described. She had applied herself to the 
study of philosophy, had acquired distinction in 
Athens as a scholar, and when still a young 
woman, had been invited to take charge of one 
of the principal schools in Alexandria, where her 
lectures drew cr6wds of admirers. Her great 
personal attractions, her learning, the unblem- 
ished purity of her life, made her extremely 
popular in the city ; but her refusal to declare 
herself a Christian — a refusal which did her 
honor, considering what the word " Christian " 
then meant — marked her out as a victim of 
religious fanaticism. 

1 Josephus says that Alexandria, in his time, was half a Jew- 
ish city. The part of the citv which the Jews inhabited was 
called the Delta. Here thej formed a sort of republic, adminis- 
tering their own affairs, rendering justice, attending to the ex- 
ecution of contracts and testaments, as in an independent state. 
— Josephus, Antiq., xviii. 9. 



THE FIGHT. 101 

Of course, it is impossible at this day to ap- 
portion ariglit the guilt of her murder. Gibbon 
charges it upon Cyril, as did Theodoret, a church 
historian of the fifth century, and an anti-Nes- 
torian. Gibbon says : " On a fatal day, in the 
holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her 
chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, 
and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter 
the reader, 'and a troop of savage and merciless 
fanatics ; her flesh was scraped from her bones 
with sharp oyster shells, and her quivering limbs 
were given to the flames. The just progress of in- 
quiry and punishment was stopped by seasonable 
gifts ; but the murder of Hypatia has imprinted 
an indelible stain on the character and religion 
of Cyril of Alexandria." ^ Chapter xlvii. 

1 An interesting sketch of her life may be found in Chateau- 
briands JEtudes Historiques, who also imputes the guilt of her 
murder to Cyril. Hypatia is the heroine of one of Charles 
Kingsley's historical romances. The bold and blunt Jortin 
sums up the case of Cyril and Hypatia in these words : " Cyril 
was strongly suspected of having been an instigator of her mur- 
der. Dupin and Lowth endeavor to vindicate him ; but though 
there is not sufficient evidence to condemn him, yet neither is 
there room to acquit him. Neither Socrates nor Valesius have 
drop])ed one word in his vindication. Philostorgius says that 
Hypatia was murdered by the Consubstantialists, and Damasius 



102 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

Triumplis at home awakened his ambition for 
conquests abroad. The other side of the Med- 
iterranean offered a wider field. He had had 
aspirations to the patriarchate of Constanti- 
nople. Foiled there, he did not mean to sink 
into a subordinate position. Was not Alexan- 
dria too large a place to play a secondary part ? ^ 

says it was done at the instigation of Cyril." — Jortin's Remarks 
on Ecclesiastical Uistory. 

One crime more or less weighs little in the condemnation of a 
man like Cyril. In regard to his conduct in the murder of 
Hypatia, Jortin goes too far when he says that Dupin endeavors 
to vindicate him. Dupin calls Hypatia an illustrious woman, 
whose reputation for learning extended so far that students 
flocked to her lectures from all parts, and says that her friend- 
ship for Orestes, the Governor of Alexandria, an open enemy 
of Cyril, made her hateful to this bishop. Dupin, indeed, says : 
*^ Saint Cyrille n'eut aucune part a ce meurtre,'* referring to 
the act itself, but not screening him from guilt in its prepara- 
tion, for Dupin adds that the assassination was by this prelate's 
friends ; and they probably well knew what would be agreeable 
to him. — Dupin, vol. iv., p. 41. 

1 *' Some jealousy which at that time subsisted respecting the 
relative dignity of the two sees of Alexandria and Constanti- 
nople probably heightened the contention, and is believed by 
some to have caused it.'^ These are feeble words found in Wad- 
dington's Church Hisforij. The truth is, this jealousy had been 
long implacable, and Cyril was confident that the Roman pontiff 
favored the claims of Alexandria. Out of hatred to Constan 
tinople, the successive popes accorded superiority to the Egyp- 



THE FIGHT. 103 

Was his church, founded by St. Mark, to yield 
to that of Constantinople which had grown up 
wholly by secular causes ? Was not the differ- 
ence in their theology an opportunity to ''mount 
the whirlwind and direct the storm ? " 

In reading history of any kind, ecclesiastical 
or civil, we must not make the mistake of suppos- 
ing that the causes assigned for controversies 
and wars create the passions which are soon dis- 
played. The passions existed before the strug- 
gle, and seek the object by which they may ex- 
press themselves. The two Italian towns w^hich 
carried on a murderous war against each other, 
alleged as a reason that the artists of one rep- 
resented the eyes of the dead Christ as open, 
against the orthodox fashion of the other who 
painted them as shut ; but every one knew that 

tian see. The quarrel between Alexandria and Constantinople 
was farther embittered by the aims of both to have supremacy 
over all the churches of the East. ''L'Eveque de Constanti- 
nople vouloit etre le maitre dcs Dioceses d'Asie et de Tout; 
celui d'Alexandrie les lui disputoit, et vouloit meme soumettre a 
sa jurisdiction une partie de I'Orient." Dupin, vol. iv., p. 327. 

Wliat scenes of intrigue, bribery, violence, and bloodshed had 
long marked the relations between Constantinople and Alex- 
andria, may be seen in an able book, St. Jean Clm/sostonie, par 
Amede Thierry, Paris, 1872: 



104 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

here was only the pretext, and that back of this 
they had many old scores to settle. 

The pretext for wars grows out of subjects 
which interest the world at the time. In epochs 
of national aggrandizement it is some question of 
a boundary ; in ages of martial glory it is some 
point of military ambition ; in commercial eras 
it is some infraction of the interests of trade. 
In the fifth century, when religious discussions 
were the world's great employment, it was a 
question whether Mary was the Mother of God. 
But in all these cases the passion is back of the 
object, and the alleged cause is only a pretext.^ 

1 The long Arian controversy which raged so fiercely for cen- 
turies, presents a memorable example of the difference between 
pretext and cause. Men said that they fought for the truth ; but 
it is incredible that ignorant hordes of barbarians understood 
the merits of the discussion about omoousian and omoionsian. It 
is not always understood even by learned men now. The in- 
tense hatred of Arianism must have been fed by political and 
national rancor. Dean Stanley, in his Lectures on the East- 
ern Churches, p. 173, says that the chief cause of the opposi- 
tion to Arianism was its *' making two Gods instead of one, 
and thus relapsing into Polytheism." No opinion can appear 
stranger than this. Early and late in the controversy the Trin- 
itarians were charged with making three Gods instead of one, 
and thus relapsing into Polytheism. In twenty-two years after 
the Council of Nice, a large Council at Sardis anathematized 
the tritheistic tendencies of believei's in the Nicene Creed. So, 



THE FIGHT. 105 

Constantinople was the head-quarters of the 
party opposed to Cyril. Fanaticism was the 
disease of the age, and Constantinople had its 
share. Gregory of Nyssa gives a vivid picture 
of the rage in that city for doctrinal disputes. 
'^ Every nook and corner of the city," he says, 
" is full of men who discuss incomprehensible 
subjects. They are found in the streets, the 
markets, among the people who sell old clothes, 
those who sit at the tables of the money-changers, 
and those who deal in provisions. Ask a man 
how many oboli a thing comes to, he gives you a 
specimen of dogmatizing on generated and un- 
generated being. Inquire the price of bread, you 
are answered, the Father is greater than the Son, 
and the Son subordinate to the Father. Ask if 
the bath be ready, you are answered, the Son of 
God was created from nothing." ^ 

The patriarch of Constantinople at that time 



in modern times, Ariam'sm has never been thought to impair 
the unity of God. On the otlier hand, Trinitarianism has 
always been prone to relapse into Polytheism. As to the real 
cause of the internecine strife between these two early forms 
of Christianity, much, no doubt, was due to the struggle for the 
approval of the civil power, as non-acceptance of its religious 
belief was treason, and was punishable as such. 
1 Quoted by Neander, vol. ii., p. 388. 



106 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

was Xestorius. He had been brought up m the 
cloisters of Antioch, and had been raised, by his 
austere life and inij)etuous eloquence, to be head 
of the church at •- a corrupt court Avhere every 
species of intrigue and 23a5sion was busily at 
work." Xeander. from whom we quote this, 
alludes to him as •• destitute of prudence and 
moderation ; '' but this seems a feeble way of 
characterizing one whose whole career reveals 
that want of practical tact and ability often seen 
in men who know nothing except from books. 

His obvious weakness invited insults. Once 
as he was j)reaching against the doctrine of the 
generation of the eternal Logos, and contrasting 
it with the nativity of Christ as the divine instru- 
ment, he was mterrupted by some crack-brained 
fanatic who exclaimed. •• Xo. the Eternal Logos 
himself condescended to the second birth:** and 
the church became the scene of one of those 
commotions of clapping and stamping for which 
Constantinople was then celebrated. At another 
time, as he was entering the church to preach in 
his usual style, a monk confronted him, declaring 
that " a heretic ous^ht not to be allowed to teach 
in pubhc." 

Li Alexandria the crv was, ''Let him be ac- 



THE FIGHT. 107 

cursed who says ' Mary is not the Mother of 
God.'" In Constantinople the cry was, "How- 
can God be born ? Who could say of the infant 
Jesus, God was two hours or two days old ? Ac- 
cursed be he who vents such blasphemy ! Mary 
was xpt^^'^oVo/cos, that is. Mother of Christ." ^ And 
then we have a long account in Church History 
of the cunning measures of Cyril to fan the 
rising flame, of the spies and bribes ^ that he 

1 Early in the last century some papists, who thought it was 
time to start some neAv wonderful phraseology, began to call the 
mother of the Virgin Mary, Anna, ''The Grandmother of God." 
The Pope, Clement XI., forbade this, as he believed it would be 
oiFensive to the Christian world. Dr. Campbell, in his Lectures 
on Ecclesiastical History, in recording these facts, adds, " It is 
impossible for one, without naming Ncstorius, to give a clearer 
decision in his favor." But to have called Anna the grand- 
mother of God would have awakened no sense of impropriety 
in the fifth century. The second Council of Nice called the 
Apostle James "God's brother." The phrase, "Mother of 
God," touched some chivalrous sensibilities of the age when it 
was first used, and it is impossible to explain its effect until we 
take this into account. " It was intimately connected," says Dr. 
Schaff, in his Church History, "with the growing veneration of 
the Virgin. It therefore struck into the field of devotion wlifch 
lies much nearer the people than that of speculative theology, 
and thus it touched the most vehement passions." 

'^ Gibbon gives an account of a letter that has been singularly 
preserved and transmitted down to our times, written by Cyril's 
archdeacon, containing a list of prominent persons in Constan- 



108 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

sent to Constantinople, of the popular preachers 
whom he won over to his side, of the letters and 
books he wrote, dedicating some to the Emperor 
Theodosius II., and converting to his views one 
of the Emperor's sisters, Augusta Pulcheria, a 
woman of great influence, who had been hurt by 
some slight of Nestorius. 

This hurt might easilj^ happen, for the patri- 
arch was impulsive and rough. By many of the 
clergy he was hated as a stranger put over them, 
and most of them joined the party who ascribed 
the greatest honor to the Virgin. 

The little story about Dalmatius is a curious 
picture of the times. Dalmatius was a monk 
who for forty-eight years had never left his cell. 
His reputation for sanctity was so great that the 
people resorted to his intercessions in every per- 
plexity. Even the Emperor himself had repeat- 
edly visited him to implore his aid. He was an 
almost omnipotent oracle in that generation. By 
Alexandrian influence he was won over to Cyril's 
side, who communicated with him by means of 

tinople to whom magnificent bribes had been sent. These bribes 
must have been numerous as well as costly, for it appears that 
the clergy of Alexandria mourned over the poverty which the 
gifts entailed. See Gibbon, 47th chapter, and also Neauder, 
vol. ii., p. 482. 



THE FIGHT. 109 

a letter concealed in a hollow reed borne as a 
staff by a pilgrim. 

Dalmatius denounced Nestorius as ^' an evil 
beast who had entered the city/' He declared 
that an exigency had now arrived that summoned 
him to leave his cell. He put himself at the head 
of a procession of monks and abbots who marched 
through the streets bearing burning torches and 
chanting psalms. He demanded that the Em- 
peror should give more heed to " six thousand 
bishops than to one godless man." He excited 
the whole city to a state of frenzied madness. 

All this encouraged Cyril to a more decisive 
step. Quarreling bishops in the East had often 
called for the help of the Pope at Rome, who was 
anxious then to extend and assure his power. 
Cyril represented to Celestine I., the reigning 
pontiff, that now was the favorable moment for 
him to intervene, and put himself at the head of 
the party contending for the highest vicAvs of the 
person of Christ. To this end he suggested that 
a general council should be summoned to settle 
the points in dispute. 

Readers of Church History know what coun- 
cils have been. One has been held in our day and 
is of fresh memory. Under the pretense of an 



110 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

inspiration of the Holy Spirit, there have proba- 
bly been no assemblies of men where worldly 
ambition, and personal intrigue, and party strife, 
and national hate, and adulation and bribery, 
have played a more effective part. 

'' Nowhere is Christianity less attractive, and, 
if we look to the ordinary tone and character of 
the proceedings, less authoritative, than in the 
Councils of the Church. They are in general a 
fierce collision of two rival factions, neither of 
which will yield, each of which is solemnly 
pledged against conviction. Intrigue, injustice, 
violence, decisions on authority alone, and that 
the authority of a turbulent majority, decisions by 
wild acclamation rather than after sober inquiry, 
detract from the reverence, and impugn the judg- 
ment at least of the later Councils. The close 
.is almost invariably a terrible anathema, in which 
it is impossible not to discern the tones of hatred, 
of arrogant triumph, of rejoicing at the damna- 
tion imprecated against the humiliated adver- 
sary." 1 

The Council summoned to meet in Ephesus 
" about Pentecost," in the year 431, was nothing 
but a tool in the hands of Cyril and the fifty 

^ Milman's Latin Christianity. 



THE FIGHT. Ill 

Egyptian bishops, and their numerous attendants, 
whom in an imposing fleet he had brought with 
him. It was opened before the prelates of Asia 
Minor, known to be adverse to the Alexandrian 
Creed, had arrived. In consequence of inunda- 
tions impairing the public ways, their progress was 
delayed. In their absence, Nestorius and sixty- 
eight bishops refused to be present. The session 
was held in the great Church of St. Mary. It 
was Mary's title to the highest honor which they 
were now determined to maintain. Cyril was 
president and directed all the proceedings. " It 
had been skillfully arranged that Ephesus should 
be chosen for the decision of a difference respect- 
ing the dignity of the Virgin, since popular tradi- 
tion had buried her in that city, and the imperfect 
Christianity of its inhabitants had readily trans- 
ferred to her the Avorship which their ancestors 
had offered to Diana." ^ There was no pretense 
at deliberation and argument, for a snap-judgment 
was pronounced, after a session of only one day. 

Their decision, which received one hundred 

and sixty signatures, is worth quoting. " Our 

Lord Jesus Christ, by Nestorius blasphemed, has 

ordained by this most holy synod that the Nesto- 

1 Waddington's Ch Hist, 



112 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

rius above named should be excluded from the 

Episcopal dignity, and from the whole college of 

priests : " and this sentence, which names no 

charge and adduces no proof, was reached, as was 

said, with an hypocrisy not altogether unknown 

in such cases, " after many tears." 

This decree was sent " To Nestorius, a second 

Judas ; " and Cyril immediately had it posted up 

in Ephesus, proclaimed by heralds, and reechoed 

by a crowd of bullies and slaves, whom he had 

brought into the citj^ to sustain his side by clamors 

and blows. Illuminations and songs and tumults 

attested his triumph, and the joy of the city, 

which claimed the honor of possessing the body 

of the Virgin.^ 

1 Of this Council Dupin writes as follows : " There are sev- 
eral objections made against the nature of this Council and the 
management of it. Some say that it ought to be accounted no 
better than a tumultuous and rash assembly, where all things 
were carried by passion and noise, and not an Ecumenical Coun- 
cil ; that St. Cyril held it against the consent of the commis- 
sioners whom the emperor sent to call them together ; that not 
only Nestorius and his party, but also several other orthodox 
bishops opposed it ; that Cyril scorned to wait for the Eastern 
bishops, who would soon have arrived, and who desired him to 
wait for them ; that he did not stay for the legates of the holy 
see, nor any of the western bishops ; that his synod was made 
up of the Egyptian bishops and some bishops of Asia who were 
wholly devoted to his will ; that it was he that did all and 



THE FIGHT. 113 

The spirit which animated Cyril's party may 
be inferred from some of their sayings which have 

ordered all in the Council. The manner in which he acted 
against Nestorius, and the rashness he was guilty of in con- 
demning him, make it credible that he was actuated by nothing 
but passion ; that St. Isidore reproved St. Cyril, telling him ' that 
several persons laughed at him, and at the tragedy which he 
had acted at Ephesus ; that it was said openly that he sought 
nothing but revenge upon his enemy ; that he liad better have 
been quiet and not revenged his private quarrels at the expense 
of the Church, and raise an eternal discord among Christians 
under a pretense of piety.' This Council was so far from bring- 
ing peace that it brought nothing but trouble, divisions, and 
scandals into the Church of Jesus Christ, so that that may be 
said of this Council with a great deal more truth, which St. Greg- 
ory jS'azianzen said of the Councils of his time, ' that he never saw 
an assembly of bishops that had a good and happy conclusion; 
that they always increased the distemper rather than cured it ; 
that the obstinate contests and ambition of domineering which 
ordinarily reigns among them renders them prejudicial, and 
generally they who are concerned to judge others, are moved 
thereto by ill-will, rather than by a desire to restrain faults.' 
This seems to agree to the Council of Ephesus better than to 
any other assembly of bishops.'' Dupin, vol. iv., p. 213. Dupin 
proceeds to mitigate the force of some of these objections, and 
finds the central cause of the quarrel in the self-contradictory 
terms dear to the Egyptian, but offensive to the Oriental bishops. 
Referring to what St. Gregory Nazianzen here said of Councils, 
Dr. Campbell adds: ''How a man, who, in the fifth century 
could talk so reasonably and so much like a Christian, came to 
be sainted, is not indeed to be easily accounted for." 
8 



114 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

come down to us. One bishop declared that "as 
those who counterfeit the imperial coin deserve 
the extremest punishment, so Nestorius, who has 
presumed to falsify the doctrines of orthodoxy, 
deserves every punishment both from God and 
man." Another bishop preached a sermon in 
which he said, as quoted by Neander, that " Nes- 
torius was worse than Cain and the Sodomites. 
The earth ought to open and swallow him up ; 
fire ought to rain down on him from heaven. 
The God Logos whom he had ventured to sever, 
who had come forth in the flesh from Mary, the 
Mother of God, would appoint for him the pun- 
ishment of eternal torments in the day of judg- 
ment." 

And what^Avas the offense of this man ? He 
believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, as a Teacher 
sent from God, and the Saviour of the world. 
But he could not accept the interpretations which 
Alexandrian fanaticism had put upon the records 
of Christ's birth. He called Mary the jMother 
of Christ, and not the Mother of God. For this 
offense, and as the representative of the prevail- 
ing belief of the Syrian churches, he must be 
crushed.^ 

1 "Had Nestorius been a better politician, and a more equal 






THE FIGHT. 115 

When at length the tardy bishops arrived at 
Ephesus, they were amazed at the precipitancy of 
Cyril, and proceeded to organize a new Council. 
They declared that the decision which had been 
proclaimed was of ex parte origin, without valid- 
ity, and that they themselves, to the number of 
forty-two bishops, constituted the only regular 
Council. 

But Cyril had got the start of them. He soon 
brought both the Emperor — a feeble boy, under 
the influence of his mother and sister — and 
the Pope to sustain his side. Nestorius was de- 
graded, his books were burned, all meetings of 
his friends forbidden, and he was driven into exile 
on one of the oases of Egypt, near the confines of 
Nubia. Here hordes of Nubian barbarians soon 
fell upon the place, laying it waste by fire and the 

match for his adversary, St. Cyril, the decision of the Church had 
infallibly been the reverse of what it was ; and we shoukl at this 
day find Cyrilianism in the list of heresies, and a Saint Nesto- 
rius in the calendar of the heatified." CampbelFs Lectures on 
Ecclesiastical History. "From his sad fate and upright character, 
Nestorias, after having been long abhorred, has in modirn jtiines, 
since Luther, found much sympathy ; while Cyril, by his violent 
conduct, has incurred much censure. Gieseler and Neander take 
the part of Nestorius; and Milman said he would rather meet 
the judgment of the Divine Redeemer loaded with the errors of 
Nestorius than with the barbarities of Cyril." Schaff. 



116 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

sword. Nestorius was carried off as a prisoner. 
By a tool of Cyril the old man was dragged about 
from place to place under a guard of soldiers. It 
is not certainly known how death came to his 
relief. As to Cyril, we may say in the words of 
Gibbon, that "the title Saint prefixed to his 
name is a mark that his opinions and his party 
finally prevailed." ^ 

1 When those who shared the opinions of Nestorins were 
driven away from Constantinople, some of them fled to the East, 
and their descendants, taking his name, and establishing churches 
amid the mountain-fastnesses of Western Persia, exist to this day. 
They form a distinct line of transmission of the Christian faith, 
independent of the Romish and Greek churches, and in some re- 
specis purer than either. Gibbon is mistaken who speaks of 
them as *' obliterated." The Nestorians number many thousand 
souls. Though an ignorant and decaying people, they still pro- 
test against calling Mary the Mother of God, or addressing her 
in prayer, or adoring her image. A Nestorian Bishop, Mar Yo- 
hannan, came to the United States in 1842. Alexander von 
Humboldt, in the second volume of his Cosmos^ says, '* It was 
one of the wondrous arrangements in the system of things that 
the Christian sect of the Nestorians, which has exerted a very 
important influence on the geographical extension of knowledge, 
v\^as of service even to the Arabians before the latter found their 
way to learned and disputatious Alexandria. The Arabians 
gained their first acquaintance with Grecian literature through 
the Syrians, while the Syrians themselves had first received a 
knowledge of Grecian literature through the anathematized 
Nestorians.'' 



THE FIGHT. 117 

A triumph where there was no inward convic- 
tion, but only an artificial union through fraud 
and violence — how long would it last? Dupin 
says : ''La paix apparente qui le suivit n'etait 
qu'une paix platr^e." There were other troubles 
at hand, and we must glance at them in order 
to complete our view of the manner in which the 
Alexandrian theology got its foothold in the 
Church.i 

There was in Constantinople an abbot by the 
name of Eutyches, a warm advocate of the Egyp- 
tian dogma, who devised some forms of expression 
that opened the controversy anew. Taking the 
words in the Proem of St. John's Gospel in their 
literal sense, " The Word was God, and the Word 
was made flesh," he contended not only that 
Christ was God, but there was nothing in him 
but God. He had but one nature and that was 

1 In looking back upon this shameful conflict, Milman, in his 
Hutory of Christianity, has some reflections' worth reading, 
thouiih in part quoted on a preceding page. He says: ** While 
ambition, intrigue, arrogance, rnpacity, and violence are pro- 
scribed as unchristian means; barbarity, persecution, bloodshed, 
as unholy and unevangelical wickednesses; posterity will con- 
demn the orthodox Cyril as one of the* worst of heretics against 
the s])irit of the Gospel. Who would not meet the judgment of 
the Divine Redeemer loaded with the errors of Nestorius, rather 
than with the barbarities of Cyril? " 



118 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

God. Those who said that God dwelt in Christ, 
divided Christ into two parts, the divine and the 
human Christ ; and this leaves the door open to 
the suspicion that the last was born in the natural 
way. This is awful heresy. Accordingly the 
cry was, " Let those who divide Christ be them- 
selves divided by the sword. Let them be hewn 
in pieces. Let them be burned alive." ^ 

Flavian, the successor of Nestorius, and like 
him a representative of the Syrian theology, op- 
posed these statements. An appeal was again 
made to the Pope. The pontiff, Leo the Great, 
called another Council which met at Ephesus in 
449. It is known in history as the '' Robber 
Synod," from its scenes of violence and blood- 
shed. '' A troop of hospital waiters and soldiers," 
says Neander, ''was admitted into the assembly 
for the purpose of intimidating refractory mem- 
bers Force was resorted to in various 

ways to compel men to assent to the decisions of 
the Council. Bishops were kept confined in the 
Church. They were menaced by soldiers and 
monks till they had subscribed, and blank papers 
were laid before them for their signature which 
could afterwards be filled up with whatever the 

1 See Neander, vol. ii., p. 501. 



THE FIGHT. 119 

leaders chose." It was thus that the Alexan- 
drian, Eutyehian, Monophysite (one nature J) doc- 
trine overwhehned all opposition.^ 

Gibbon gives a picturesque view of this Coun- 
cil. " A furious multitude of monks and soldiers, 
with staves and swords and chains, hurst into the 
church ; the trembling bishops hid themselves 
behind the altar or under the benches, and as 
they were not inspired with the zeal of martyr- 
dom, they successively subscribed a blank paper 
which was afterwards filled with the condemna- 
tion of the Byzantine prelate. Flavian was in- 
stantly delivered to the wild beasts of this spirit- 
ual amphitheatre. It is said that the patriarch 

1 It is edifying to see what sensible words a contemporary 
uttered in regard to the fact that the violent party had the 
majority on its side. Eutherus was at this time Bishop of 
Tyana, and with other Syrian prehites manfully combated the 
Alexandrian theology. When told tliat the multitude was 
against him, he asked, in words translated into French: "Mais 
quelle est cette multitude que vous m'opposez? C'est une 
troupe de gens corrumpus par les flatteries et par les prisons. 
C'est un nombre d'ignorans qui n'ont point de Inmiere pour se 
conduire. Ce sont une quantite de personnes foibles et timides 
qui se sont laissees vaincre. Ainsi quand vous m'opposez cette 
multitude pour autoriser le mensonge, vous ne faites autre 
chose que de decouvrir la grandeur du mal et le grand nombre 
des miserables.'' Dupin, vol. iv., p. 68. 



120 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

of Alexandria reviled and buffeted and kicked 
and trampled his brother of Constantinople ; it 
is certain that the yictim, before he could reach 
the place of his exile, expired on the third day of 
the wounds and bruises he had received at Ephe- 
sus." Chapter 47. 

Two years later still another Council was called 
to meet at Chalcedon, whose main object it 
seemed to be to hit upon expressions that would 
harmonize all parties. As their result has con- 
tinued to the present time to be the orthodox 
expression of the nature and person of Christ, it 
deserves to be here quoted. We find it thus 
stated by Dupin : " That they did believe in one 
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, perfect God 
and perfect man, consubstantial with God as to 
his divinity, and with man according to his hu- 
manity ; in whom there are two natures united 
without change, division, or separation ; so that 
the properties of the two natures do subsist in 
and agree to one and the same person, who is 
not divided into two, but is one Jesus Christ." 

And thus, as Gibbon says, '' the road to Para- 
dise, a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended 
over the abj' ss by the master-hand of the theolog- 
ical artist. During ten centuries of blindness and 



THE FIGHT. 121 

servitude, Europe received her religious opinions 
from the oracle of the Vatican, and the same doc- 
trine, already varnished with the rust of antiq- 
uity, was admitted without dispute into the creed 
of the Reformers, who disclaimed the supremacy 
of the Roman Pontiff. The Synod of Chalcedon 
still triumphs in the Protestant churches ; but the 
ferment of controversy has subsided, and the 
most pious Christians of the present day are 
ignorant or careless of their belief concerning the 
mysteries of the incarnation." Chapter 47. 

No, not so much " careless of their belief," as 
blindlj^ following their leaders, like sheep. For 
this decision of the Council of Chalcedon is re- 
garded in some quarters, even at the present day, 
as the last word which the science of theology 
can utter. Dr. Shedd, in his " History of Doc- 
trines," says, '' Beyond this, the human mind, it 
is probable, is unable to go in the endeavor to 
unfold the mystery of Christ's complex person." 

If a writer on geology, reverting to the earliest 
speculations on that science, should claim them as 
something beyond which the human mind cannot 
go, Avhat should we think of such a statement as 
that.i 
1 After all, it is worthy of notice that these definitions of the 



122 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

The world has probablj' never known an as- 
sumption more monstrous than that we are to 
yield our confidence to those packed conventions 
of ignorant and brutal men. Out upon the claim, 
as one of the most insultino- and outrao'eous ever 
made. It does, indeed, become a humble faith to 
recognize with reverence a Divine hand in the 
transmission of Christianity from age to age, and 
to feel grateful for all that learning and genius 
have contributed to its defense. But no less is 

doctrine of the Trinity are wholly unsatisfactory to the most 
acute evangelical minds of the present day. It is admitted that 
they are self-contradictory. The late Professor JNIoses Stuart, 
of Andovcr Theological Seminary, says of them, " They are open 
to grave and appalling objections." In further criticising their 
representations he says : ''If I understand their views [the Nicene 
Fathers], they do, in an occult manner indeed, hut yet really and 
effectually interfere with the tnie equality in substance, power, 
and g'ory of the three persons or distinctions in the Godhead. 
This seems to be taking away with the left hand what we have 
given with the right. If I say in words that Christ and the 
Spirit are God, and very God, and yet assign to them attributes 
or a condition which after all make them dependent, and repre- 
sent them as derived and originated, then I am in fact no real 
believer in the doctrine of true equality among the persons of the 
Godhead ; or else I use expressions out of their lawful and ac- 
customed sense, and lose myself amid the sound of words, while 
things are not examined and defined with scrupulous care and ac- 
curacy." Professor Stuart, in Biblical Repository for April, 1835. 



THE FIGHT. 123 

the obligation to reject with scorn the mass of 
contradictions and lies which some have tried to 
foist into the sacred deposit of truth. 

When we reflect upon the perversions of Chris- 
tianitv, and upon the divisions and wars among 
Christians which all these mad passions entailed, 
one gigantic fact must not be overlooked, though 
it is not often adduced in this connection. 

Of course a great religion, which has acted, 
and still acts, a tremendous part in history, is the 
result of many cooperating influences ; but who 
doubts that the vast Mohammedan power found 
one of the causes of its rise and marvelous diffu- 
sion in the doctrinal corruptions and strifes which 
extended into the centuries that followed the 
times to which we have here referred? It started 
as a restorer of the original purity of various re- 
ligions, Arabian, Jewish, and Christian, but to a 
large degree it was a protest against the attack 
upon the unity of God, and the ascription to 
Jesus of equality with the Supreme Father. 

'•'• There is no God but God," was its rallying 
cry, while both Mohammed and Jesus were re- 
garded as Teachers sent from heaven. We do 
not comprehend the system of the false Prophet 
until we look back upon it as in part an offshoot 



124 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

from a corrupt Christianity, — an offshoot which 
in some fundamental points better preserved the 
purity of the parent stock, — an offshoot which 
might have never reached such height and 
strength had not the errors and passions of Chris- 
tians opened the way to its growth. 

In the next chapter we shall endeavor to prove 
that the earliest Christian writers, subsequent to 
the evangelists and apostles, knew nothing of 
these corruptions. 



CHAPTER VIL 

THE FATHERS. 

TESUS of Nazareth, receiving in conformity 
^ with the normal action of his own intellectual 
and spiritual nature, an inspiration from on high 
by which he became the Son of God, the Teacher 
and Guide of humanity, yet born of Mary and 
Joseph, amid beautiful and touching natural cir- 
cumstances, which formed part of family me- 
moirs or traditions, not at first noticed, but which 
were afterwards attached to the gospel histories, 
and were subsequently misinterpreted in support 
of a doctrine never heard of in the earliest ages 
of the Church, but into whose creed it became 
afterwards incorporated by fraud and violence — 
if all this be so, we may expect to find traces of 
it in the writings of the Fathers. 

For this purpose it becomes important to give 
a careful examination to those writings, in the 
chronological order usually assigned to them, and 
to note what they have to say about Jesus. If 



126 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

we find in the earliest Christian generations no 
mention of a supernatural birth, if we see this 
dogma in after generations first incidentally al- 
luded to, and finally in the fourth and fifth cent- 
uries set forth in the manner witnessed in the 
last chapter, then we may regard these facts as 
confirmations of the essential truth of the posi- 
tions here taken. 

1. The first Christian writer after the apostles 
was Clement of Rome. Very little is known of 
his life. He is claimed as the third successor 
from St. Peter in the line of Popes ; but he lived 
long before the word Pope had acquired the 
meaning since so well known. There is a con- 
currence of all writers in the opinion that he died 
in Rome, about the j^ear 100, having had some 
office there as pastor or overseer of the Church, 
and from thence had sent two epistles to the 
church at Corinth. The second is short and of 
little consequence. The first is of considerable 
length, and of much importance. 

Of this epistle Mosheim says, "- It is generally, 
and I think not without reason, considered as 
indisputably genuine in the main." Neander 
says, " The first epistle of Clement was in the 
first centuries read at public worship in many of 



THE FATHERS. 127 

the churches along with the Scriptures of the 
New Testament. Although genuine in the main, 
it is still not exempt from many interpolations." 
Donaldson, in his " Critical History of Christian 
Literature and Doctrine," a learned and able 
work, which we shall have frequent occasion to 
consult, quotes the evidence of Eusebius and Je- 
rome to prove that it was by them regarded as 
the trustworthy writing of Clement, and fixes 
its date as near the close of the fii'st century. 

This letter, wdiich is longer than any of the 
epistles of St. Paul, gives an account of Christ's 
life and words and promises, and of the leading 
hopes and duties of believers. It is therefore of 
value as showing w^hat was the Christian faith 
and spirit in the very first years after the death 
of the apostles. We therefore turn to it with 
interest to mark Avhat it has to say on the subject 
of tlie miraculous birth of Christ. 

This epistle may be found in the " Apocryphal 
New Testament," printed in Boston, 1832, and 
the reader can see for himself that a miraculous 
conception, or supernatural birth of Jesus, is a 
point not once named or alluded to. In reading 
this epistle no one could possibly obtain a hint 
that such a dogma had ever been taught. It thus 



128 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

follows in the steps of St. Paul, and St. Peter, 
and St. John, in not recognizing one of the mis- 
interpretations of later ages. 

Moreover there is no allusion to the miraculous 
conception or birth in the other writings of Clem- 
ent. The weight of this negative evidence, to 
show that this was not then believed by the 
Christian Church, will not be overlooked by the 
reader. 

2. Following Clement, the next Christian writ- 
er whose works we possess is Polycarp. He was 
for a long time pastor of a church at Smyrna, 
from which place he wrote an extant epistle to 
the Philippians. The date is not far from 150, 
and though, as Mosheim says, it has been inter- 
polated by weak and superstitious copyists, it is 
by many considered for the most part genuine 
and authentic. 

Two circumstances give special interest to 
Polycarp : the first that he had been personally 
acquainted with the Apostle John ; and the sec- 
ond that in his old age he was dragged into the 
amphitheatre at Smyrna, and required to blas- 
pheme Christ. He said, " Eighty and six years 
have I served Christ, and he has never done me 
an injury; how can I blaspheme my King and 



THE FATHERS. 129 

Saviour?" Then lie was disrobed, bound to a 
stake, and burned to death. 

The epistle to the Philippians is not long. In 
this, Polycarp writes of Christ as the Son of God, 
who suffered for us, and whom God raised up 
from the dead; but there is not the remotest 
allusion to anything peculiar in his birth. This 
epistle is also included in the " Apocryphal New 
Testament," and all can easily procure it and read 
it for themselves. If the interpretations now put 
upon the records of Christ's birth were then 
believed, and were then thought to have the 
importance now ascribed to them, why did not 
those early Fathers have one word to say about 
them? 

3. Barnabas is the next Christian writer. He 
was the companion of St. Paul, and was the noble 
man who took that apostle by the hand, after his 
conversion, and when every one beside was still 
afraid of him. Acts ix. 27. The general epistle 
which goes by his name is a long letter referring 
largely to the events of Christ's life and suffering 
and death, and dwelling upon the fact that he is 
the Son of God and Saviour of the world. The 
document is by many regarded as genuine. It 
is in the " Codex Siniaticus." Origen calls it "a 

9 



130 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

catholic epistle." Dupiii, Dr. Mill, Archbishop 
Wake, and others admit its authenticity ; but, on 
the other hand, Neander and Donaldson think it 
has no claim to be considered authentic. Mos- 
heim's opinion is that it was written by a man 
called Barnabas, '' not wanting in piety, but of a 
weak and superstitious character," and ''the early 
Christians, led away by a name for which they 
entertained the highest reverence, attributed it to 
the friend and companion of St. Paul." 

Whether genuine or not, one thing is certain, 
it makes no allusion to anything unusual in the 
birth of Jesus, as any one may see for himself, 
since this also is included in the " Apocryphal 
New Testament," before referred to. 

4. The Shepherd of Hernias is the next Chris- 
tian writer. His extant works are divided into 
three books, '' Visions," " Commands," and "- Si- 
militudes." There is a great diversity of opinion 
as to the character of these works, and the time 
and place of their composition. Some think the 
writer is the Her mas referred to by St. Paul. 
Romans xvi. 14. Others suppose he was a broth- 
er of Pius I. Bishop of Rome in 154, and that he 
lived and wrote in Italy. Mosheim doubts if the 
writer was sane. Neander says his works w^ere 



THE FATHERS. 131 

in high repute, in the second century. Origen 
often quotes them, as did Eusebius and Athana- 
sins. Donaldson regards them as very interest- 
ing; and to those who call them silly, he says 
that Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress would have 
seemed absurd to Latin critics. He adds that 
Bunsen compares them to Dante's ''Divina Corn- 
media.^ 

1 But it should be added that Bunsen compares them only in 
certain points, which he names as follows: "It is very remark- 
able that Hermas has performed his task wnth the same religious 
respect for the historical individuality of his person that Dante 
exhibits nearly twelve centuries later; and moreover, we do not 
scruple to say, reveals not onh^ an equal intensity of religious 
belief, but a far greater hopefulness for the future ; therefore 
really a much stronger faith in the victory of the true world- 
transforming Christianity than was possessed by the great 
mediaeval Florentine. Both present us with a picture of the in- 
ward history of the soul, of its awakening from selfishness, and 
the mad pursuit of sensual pleasure, to faith in the Divine 
redeeming love, and of the passage through a purifying state of 
suffering to the blessedness of peace ; both depict these changes 
as taking place after the close of the earthly life. But while the 
prophet of the Middle Ages nowhere expresses any hope for 
the earthly life of Christendom, for the existing ecclesiastical 
form of God's kingdom, but, on the contrary, transfers all blessed- 
ness and all just retribution to the future world, Hermas, in the 
very midst of persecution, nay, on the eve of a new persecution 
which he sees to be impending, with the eye of his spirit gazes 
with rapture on the magnificent expansion of the kingdom of 



132 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

In bulk they make a quarter part of the 
" Apocryphal New Testament." They refer to 
the leadhig events of Christ's life, deaths and res- 
urrection ; but throughout the whole there is no 
hint of anything extraordinary in his birth. 
Donaldson says, '-'- The writer's yiews in regard to 
Christ are especially Ebionistic." 

In coming down now to the early part of the 
second half of the second century, we meet with 
five Christian writers who were nearly contempo- 
raries, — Hegesippus, Athenagoras, Theophilus, 
Tatian, and Justin Martyr. We will give a 
glance at each in the order in which we have 
here named them. 

5. Hegesippus was a converted Jew, who visited 
Corinth and Rome about the year 170. He 
wrote the history of ecclesiastical affairs from the 
death of Christ to his own time ; but nothing of 
it remains except some scattered fragments, from 
which it appears that it was a book of notes, 
recollections, and scraps of information. Donald- 
son says he speaks of Christ as the Son of God, 
and this is about all the doctrinal information we 
get from him. There is no reference whatever to 
a supposed miraculous birth. 

God that was destined to replace the moribund vitality of the 
Greek and Roman world." — God in History ^ vol. iii., p. 83. 



THE FATHERS. 133 

6. Athenagoras was of Alexandria, and was a 
leader of a school there. He became a Christian, 
and published a defense of the Christians about 
the year 168. Two works of his are extant, the 
defense above alluded to, and a small treatise on 
the resurrection-. Critics speak of him as writ- 
ing in a clear and strong style, and pronounce his 
defense of the Christians the best produced in 
that age. He gives a full account of the Chris- 
tian system, and dwells particularly upon its 
power to purify and ennoble the conduct of man. 
Following the style of the Gnostic writers he calls 
the Logos the reason of God, but he has nothing 
to say about a supernatural birth of Jesus. 

7. Theophilus was of Antioch. Eusebius says 
he was the sixth overseer of the church in that 
city. The only extant work of his is addressed 
to Autolycus, designed to show the falsity of 
heathenism, and the truth of Christianity. For 
this purpose he cites the chief doctrines and pre- 
cepts of the Gospels ; but there is no allusion to 
anything miraculous in the birth of Christ. 

8. Tatian, a Syrian, brought up a heathen, 
was a traveling lecturer, but became converted 
to Christianity, and is chiefly remarkable for his 
leaning towards Gnosticism and asceticism. He 



134 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

left several works, only one of which is extant — 
an Oration to the Greeks, commended by Euse- 
bius and Origen. His object is to show that 
there is much in what the Greeks caU barbarian 
religions which is worthy of their notice. He de- 
nounces the ^Greek mythology, and holds up for 
imitation the pure morals of the Christians. He 
regards the Logos as the power of reason, ema- 
nating from God as a light emanates from a burn- 
ing torch ; but he gives no account of the birth 
of Christ as differing from the birth of others. 

9. Justin Martyr was born at Neapolis, near 
Sichem, in Samaria, about the beginning of the 
second century. He is supposed to have been of 
Roman descent, at any rate was not a Jew by 
birth. He devoted himself to the study of the 
prevailing systems of philosophy, — the Stoic, the 
Pythagorean, the Platonic, — but none of them 
satisfied him. One day as he was walking near 
the sea shore — we are not told what shore — he 
met an old man of gentle and venerable appear- 
ance who talked with him about the object of 
life, the existence of God, the soul of man ; and 
finally called his attention to the Hebrew proph- 
ets, through whom the gates of light might be 
opened to him, and God and Christ might give 



THE FATHERS. 135 

him understanding. It may have been one who 
had himself personally seen Jesus. '^ And sud- 
denly," said Justin, " a fire was lighted in my 
soul, and I was possessed with a love of the proph- 
ets, and of those men who are Christ's friends." 

We know little of the events of Justin's life, 
and the most important thing that we know is 
that he published a defense of Christians ad- 
dressed to Antoninus Pius, another work of a 
similar kind addressed to Marcus Aurelius, a 
Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew, and a few other 
works of less value. They mark him as one of 
the most important of the early Christian writers. 
Such was the result of that chance conversation 
by the sea-shore. 

He is regarded as a man of good culture and 
extensive reading, but not a profound thinker, 
nor a systematic reasoner. He was not a theolo- 
gian, nor an ecclesiastic, but rather a philosopher ; 
and he wore the mantle of a philosopher as long 
as he lived. He wins our love by his bold and 
manly address to the Roman Emperor, to whom 
he writes, " We can receive no injury from you 
unless we are workers of iniquity. You can kill 
us ; injure us you cannot." 

He conceived of Christ as the chief angel of 



136 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

God, the Logos-agent of the Almighty, whose 
oflBces are recorded throughout the Old Testa- 
ment history. He refers to the events of Christ's 
life as we find them recorded in the Gospels. He 
is the first writer, we believe, who describes Christ 
as not born of human parents. He believed that 
the Logos of God, Avhich in the Old Testament 
ages had assumed so many forms, might in these 
latter times come in the form of man without 
human seed ; and this, as he says, was exactly 
parallel to what, as the Grecians . taught, had 
happened to many sons of Jupiter. 

Yet this view of Christ's birth is a point to 
which he refers only incidentally, without as- 
signing any great importance to it ; the reason 
of which is obvious, for he adds, " Some of my 
friends, of our Christian sect, aTro tov rjimeT^pov 
yeuov<;, maintain that Christ was born of human 
parents ; " and in another place, in a list of her- 
etics, he did not include the Ebionites, who never 
believed the miraculous birth. 

Here, then, is the first suggestion of anything 
miraculous in the birth of Christ. It first ap- 
pears nearly two centuries after his birth ; and 
here no prominence is assigned to it, and it is 
coupled with the distinct admission that some 




THE FATHERS. 137 

did not believe it. What is equally surprising 
is, that for his own faith in Christ's supernatural 
birth Justin appeals to no testimony or traditions 
which must have existed at his time, had the 
event occurred or been generally believed; but 
finds an argument for it in the heathen genealo- 
gies of the gods. It is to be added, that Justin 
did not know the Hebrew language, and perhaps 
was not therefore able to appreciate the linguistic 
reasons which liad kept the apostles and fathers 
before him from assigning to the stories in St. 
Luke the sense which he attached to them. 

We have made a study of succeeding Fathers of 
the Church, such as Cyprian, Tertullian, Origen, 
with a view of bringing forward the statements 
of their belief concerning the birth of Jesus. 
But to extend our examination of their writ- 
ings any farther would be giving a dispropor- 
tionate attention to this point; nor is it really 
necessary, since the remark in general terms is 
sufficient that, subsequent to the point of time to 
which we have now arrived, allusions to a sup- 
posed miraculous birth of Christ are found more 
or less distinctly in nearly all Christian writers. 
The prominence that was now given to this 
dogma, through the causes adverted to in our 



138 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 

fifth chapter ; the new style of language in regard 
to it that now came into fashion ; and the multi- 
tudinous speculations and absurd exegesis to 
which it gave rise, will be sufficiently apparent 
by a glance, which we propose to give in the next 
chapter, at the modes of patristic reasoning. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

PATRISTIC REASONING. 

T N the above review of the writings of the ear- 
liest Fathers, we have seen that there was no 
allusion to the miraculous birth of Christ in the 
extant works of those authors who immediately 
succeeded the apostles. It is only when we 
come down to the latter part of the second cent- 
ury that Ave find the first traces of that dogma. 

It may be of some service to place directly 
under the eye a synopsis of the results we have 
thus far reached. 

St. Matthew and St. Luke have annexed to 
their Gospels some detached family traditions, to 
which were ascribed but little importance, as 
these contained merely private reminiscences of 
the birth of Jesus. 

St. Mark and St. John do not record them at 
all. 

The sermons of the first preachers of the Gos- 
pel, reported so fully in the Acts of the Apostles, 
make no mention of them. 



140 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

The Epistles of St. Paul, and St. Peter, and 
St. John do not relate them. 

Clemens Romanus, the first Christian writer 
after the apostles, is ' silent in regard to any 
thing supernatural in the birth of Christ. 

To him succeeded Polycarp, who is equally 
silent. 

Barnabas, a companion, as is supposed, of St. 
Paul, is the next Christian writer, and he does 
not refer to it. 

The same remark is to be made of the Shep- 
herd of Hermas. 

Then come Hegesippus, the Church historian, 
and Athenagoras of Alexandria, and Theophilus 
of Antioch, and Tatian the Syrian, who are all 
equally silent on this point. 

Justin Martyr, in the second century, is the 
first writer who speaks of something miraculous 
in the birth of Christ, to which view he seems to 
haye been led by his heathen training, as such a 
birth was similar to what had happened to sons 
of Jupiter; but he assigns no prominence to this 
point, and says expresslj^ that some Christians 
did not believe it. 

To show that in the first generations of Chris- 
tians this dogma of a miraculous conception was 



PATRISTIC REASONING. 141 

unknown, there is a still more important proof to 
be now submitted, and a proof which must be 
regarded as decisive. 

Its early absence is distinctly and expressly 
admitted by those who began to broach it and 
maintain it ; and they assigned special reasons 
why it had not before been received. 

The facts of the case were as follows : When 
Christian preachers and writers first began to 
attach so much importance to the records of 
Christ's birth, surprise was naturally awakened; 
and they were told to look to the traditions of 
the Church, for it was well known that these 
supernatural interpretations were of recent ori- 
gin, and were unknown to the first Christian be- 
lievers. 

How was this objection met? It was admitted 
that the real facts about Christ's birth had not 
before been understood, and reasons were given 
why they had been lately discovered. If we find 
these reasons to be very weak and absurd, they 
are none the less interesting in view of the point 
which we have here in mind. 

And now what are these reasons ? 

If our readers have ever turned over the leaves 
of the writings of the Fathers, some of them now 



142 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

quite accessible in the beautiful English ''Ante- 
Nicene Library of the Fathers," they will be pre- 
pared for the strange mixture of a sincere, earnest 
faith, with feeble puerilities, and foolish fancies, 
and solemn absurdities, which there abound. 
We may begin our citations with ahnost any one, 
and we will turn first to no obscure name, to St. 
Chrysostom — him of the golden mouth. 

In reference to the miraculous birth he ob- 
serves : " This was concealed and managed as a 
great and wonderful thing to preserve the Virgin, 
and cover her from wicked suspicions. For if 
this had been known to the Jews from the be- 
ginning, they would have stoned the Virgin, abus- 
ing her for what would have been said, and have 

condemned her for adultery Nor did the 

Virgin herself dare to confess this. For observe 
how she calls Joseph the father of Jesus, when 
she said to him, ' Behold thy father and I have 
sought thee.' If the truth had been suspected, 
Jesus would not have been thought to have been 
the son of David ; and this not being admitted, 
many mischiefs would have arisen. On the same 
account the angels did not mention this except to 
Mary and Joseph only, but not to the shej)herds, 
though the}^ acquainted them with the fact of the 
birth." 



PATRISTIC EEASONING. 143 

But St. Chrysostom does not tell us by what 
means the full facts became known two or three 
hundred years after the event. It could not have 
been from the narratives of Matthew and Luke, 
for these had long been read without deriving 
from them the dogma in question. Was there 
any special revelation in later times? Or how 
did the " management " that shut out the mis- 
chiefs, and screened the Virgin, and taught her 
to prevaricate, unfold the knowledge of the case 
to St. Chrysostom ? 

Of course it occurred to many to ask, If Mary 
was the only parent of Jesus, why was she mar- 
ried at all? Had there been no marriage, the 
presumption of her virginity, and the exclusion 
of any paternity, would have been more probable. 
But ansAvers were at hand. 

St. Jerome gives three reasons why Mary was 
married to Joseph. 1. That it might appear that 
Jesus was descended from David. 2. Lest Mary 
should have been stoned as an adulteress. 3. That 
she might have a guardian in the flight into 
Egypt. 

St. Basil and Theophylact take a still higher 
flight in accounting for Mary's marriage. St. 
Basil says, '' Mary was married to Joseph that 



144 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

the devil might not suspect that she was a vir- 
gin, for he knew that Christ was to be born of a 
virgin." In the same strain argues Theophylact, 
who says, '' Mary was married that she by this 
means might deceive the devil. For the devil, 
having heard that Christ was to be born of a vir- 
gin, observed the virgins. She therefore married 
Joseph to deceive the deceiver." 

Following in this same strain. Damascenes says, 
*•' The virginity of Marj^, her delivery, and the 
birth of Christ, were all concealed from the 
devil." 

It was all plain to St. Ambrose why Jesus him- 
self never alluded to the miraculous conception, 
for that writer says, " Our Lord rather chose 
that his origin should be unknown than that his 
mother's chastity should be questioned." The 
fact of his divine origin was quite subordinate to 
a false opinion about his mother. 

Curious, too, is it to see how many a priori 
reasons the Fathers had for the birth of Christ 
from a virgin. In that age they all knew exactly 
how it ought to take place. Cyril of Alexandria, 
the same whose contest with Nestorius we have 
described in a former chapter, said: ''Christ 
ought to have such a birth that his presence and 



PATRISTIC REASONING. 145 

manifestation to the world might have something 
in it worthy of a God." 

Lactantius said that as God was without father 
and mother, so the son had to be born twice, that 
he might be born without father and mother ; 
for he was first spiritually generated by God the 
Father only, and so without mother ; and then 
again he was carnally born by the Virgin alone, 
and so without father. 

St. Augustine thought that the salvation of the 
fema,]e sex was particularly intended by Christ 
being born of a woman only ; for as he was de- 
rived solely from a woman, he would naturally 
feel a deeper interest in woman's lot; while if he 
had had a father as well as a mother, he might 
have taken more than a due care of the male sex. 
Such was St. Augustine's reasoning. 

St. Irenseus asks. If Christ were born of Joseph, 
how could he have surpassed Solomon or David ? 
Were he produced in the same manner, and their 
descendant. Omnipotence could have made noth- 
ing more of him than of them. 

Justin Martyr said that Christ was born of a 

virgin, that by the same means that disobedience 

came by a word, that is of the serpent, by the 

same means it should be terminated by a word. 

10 



146 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

For Eve, a yirgin, uncorrupt, conceived by the 
word of the serpent, and brought forth death ; 
so the Virgin Mary conceived by the word of 
the angel, and brought forth deliverance from 
death. 

The same conceit was taken up by others. 
Cyril of Jerusalem said that '' as death came by 
the virgin Eve, so it was necessary that life 
should be brought by a virgin." But St. Am- 
brose varied the comparison, for he said, '' Adam 
was made of the virgin earth, and Christ was 
made from a virmn woman." 

St. Chrysostom knew exactly what sort of a 
birth it was fitting Jesus should have, for he said, 
''It is not because marriage is a bad thing, but 
because virgmity is better ; and it behooved the 
Lord of all to have a more splendid entrance into 
the world than ours, for it was the entrance of a 
kino:. He ouo^ht to be born of a woman in com- 
mon with us ; but to be born without marriage 
which makes him greater than us." 

St. Athanasius also dwells on this thought that 
Christ's birth makes him greater than all, for his 
eloquence flames out as follows : " What right- 
eous person, what holy prophet or patriarch in 
all the sacred writings, was born of a virgin 



PATEISTIC REASONING. 147 

only ? or what woman was sufficient for the con- 
ception of a man without a man? " 

This opinion, that it was specially honorable to 
Jesus to be without a father, is frequently pre- 
sented in these writings, as if what we think is 
honorable is to decide our view of what God has 
done. We might think it more honorable still if 
Jesus had had no mother, had not been born at 
all, or not born an infant, or not born in a stable; 
and it is not easy to see where such human ideas 
of what is honorable might stop. 

The Emperor Constantino, in his oration before 
the Council of Nice, says, '•' When Christ was. to 
live among men he invented a new way of being 
born ; for there was a conception without a mar- 
riage, a delivery of a pure virgin, and a young 
woman was the Mother of God." This idea of 
inventing a new way of birth has been reproduced 
in recent times. ^ 

In reviewing the above citations, perhaps no 
one can read them without seeing that we here 
meet many expressions wholly different from any- 
thing found in the writings of the apostles and 
of their first successors. The entire body of the 

^ See Disquisitions and Notes on the Gospel of Matthew. By 
John H. Morison, Boston, 1860, p. 37. 




148 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

literature of these last named writers does not 
offer so much about the birth of Christ as we 
may find on one page of the writings of the third 
and fourth centuries. The strata of thought is 
as abruptly different as any strata of gravel and 
clay or granite and trap the geologist knows. 

The allegorical mode of interpretation which so 
much flourished in that age opened a wide door 
for the loss of any sound practical sense, and for 
the entrance of any improbable conceit. It is 
important to mark the fact, that this mode came 
into vogue among those who were out of the 
circle of the strongest Jewish influence, and were 
in contact with Greek civilization. Hence they 
were not hampered by Hebrew lexicography or 
traditions. It was the idea of Origen that every 
passage of Scripture had a spiritual element, and 
sometimes, as lie maintained, a spiritual truth in 
a corporeal falsehood. With such latitude of in- 
terpretation, how many prophecies and hints of 
the miraculous birth of Christ might be found ! 

We read in Psalm cxxxix. 16, " In thy book 
all my members were written." Epiphanius 
thought that David said this in the name of 
Christ, and the book was the Virgin's womb. In 
the Song of Solomon iv. 12, we read, " A garden 



PATRISTIC REASONING. 149 

enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, 
a fountain sealed." This was often referred to 
the Virgin ; and the visitor to Rome may see this 
text cited on the tasteless monument in the Piazza 
di Spagna, erected in honor of the dogma of the 
Immaculate Conception. In Psalm cxxxix. 13, 
we read, '' Thou hast covered me in my mother's 
womb." Eusebius applies this to Christ, whose 
miraculous conception was hid from the world. 

In the very first verse of Genesis a prediction 
of the Virgin Mary was found. " In the begin- 
ning God created the heaven and the earth." 
That means Joachim and Anna, the father and 
mother of the Virgin. " And the earth was with- 
out form and void." That is, Anna was barren. 
'' And darkness was on the face of the deep." 
This is the sorrow she felt. "And the spirit of 
God moved upon the face of the waters." That 
is, the Holy Ghost giving conception to Anna. 
" And God said, let there be light." That is, the 
Virgin was born. 

Probably it is such exegesis as this that led 
the poet to say : — 

" The fly-blown text conceives an alien brood, 
And turns to maggots what was meant for food." 

It may be that we have now seen enough of 



150 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

the Fathers to lead ns to indorse the opinion of 
Milton, who says : " Whatsoever time or the 
heedless hand of blind chance hath drawn from 
of old to this present, in her huge drag-net, 
whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, un- 
picked, unchosen, — these are the Fathers. See- 
ing, therefore, some men deeply conversant in 
books have had so little care of late to give the 
world a better account of their reading, than by 
divulging needless tractates stuffed with the spe- 
cious names of Ignatius and Polycarp, with frag- 
ments of old mythologies and legends to distract 
and stagger the multitude of credulous readers, 
and mislead them from their strong guards and 
places of safety under the tuition of Holy Writ, 
it came into my thoughts to persuade myself, set- 
ting all distances and nice respects aside, that I 
could do religion and my country no better ser- 
vice for the time, than by doing my utmost 
endeavor to recall the people of God from this 
vain foraging after straw, and to reduce them to 
their firm stations under the standard of the 
Gospel, hj making appear to them, first the in- 
suSiciency, next the inconveniency, and lastly 
the impiety of these gay testimonies that their 
great doctors would bring them to dote on." ^ 

1 Milton's Prelatical Episcopaci/. 



PATRISTIC REASONING. 151 

We are apt to suppose that the fact of their 
nearness to the times of the apostles gives the 
Fathers an authoritj^ superior to all other writers. 
We forget, as Macaulay has well said, '' that their 
disadvantages in other respects place them below 
a third rate student of Scripture of a later age, 
just as a man with bad eyes may not see an ob- 
ject so clearly at fifty yards, as another with good 
eyes may see it at half a mile. Almost all the 
Fathers had very bad eyes, and they attempted 
to remedy the defect with worse spectacles." 

That among such men there should gradually 
grow up a misinterpretation of the records of the 
birth of Jesus, and an assignment to them of an 
importance not at first thought of, will seem all. 
the more probable if we remember two facts 
which marked the primitive age of Christianity. 

The first is that some time elapsed before the 
writings -of the New Testament were reverenced 
as a part of the Holy Scriptures. Those writings 
were not composed during the generation that 
was contemporary with Jesus. Even after they 
had been gathered into the form in which we now 
have them, converts from Judaism could not at 
once have held them in the same light in which 
they regarded their older sacred books. 



152 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 

Of course the life of Jesus was of deep interest 
to them. Yet it was not the subject of the crit- 
ical study elsewhere bestowed. Of this we have 
plenary proof. Among the immense mass of ex- 
tant writings of the Fathers, it is surprising to 
mark what a vast proportion is commentary on 
the Old Testament. We see the cause of this 
only when we reflect how slowly the reverence 
for that book would be shared by works which 
must have seemed so modern. There was a con- 
stant attempt to prove that Christ was foretold 
and described in the Law, the Prophets, and the 
Psalms, — the same tendency so manifest in the 
evangelists, who pored over the Jewish Scriptures 
to find predictions of events in the life of Jesus. 
It is probable, judging from the titles of books 
that have come down to us, that in the first years 
of the Gospels The Song of Solomon received 
more critical study than the Gospels themselves. 
Origen, between A. D. 215 and 254, gave twenty- 
eight years of his life, terminated at this last date, 
to a critical study of the Old Testament, bringing 
to the task vast learning, and unexampled bold- 
ness and acuteness of speculation, while he be- 
stowed comparatively little attention upon that 
New Testament which, as he seems not to have 



« 



PATRISTIC REASONING. 153 

suspected, would soon eclipse in interest the elder 
Scriptures. We need not say how favorable all 
this was to the creeping in of wide-spread mis- 
conceptions of the real meaning of the Gospels. 

But, secondly, what critical study there was 
among the first generations of believers was not 
only devoid of any scientific accuracy, but was 
worthless through false rules of interpretation. 
The reader of the preceding pages has seen evi- 
dence enough of the love of allegory, and the 
search for mystical but baseless meanings. Men 
then applied to the words of the evangelical nar- 
rative '-'- not an historical criticism, but abstruse 

metaphysical conceptions The world and 

society presented conditions less and less favor- 
able to sane criticism. It was under these con- 
ditions that the dogma now called orthodox grew 
up." 1 

Thus an age of puerile speculations still further 
favored the rise of the misconceptions on which 
we have dwelt, and which in time acquired the 
dogmatic form set forth in the ''Apostles' Creed," 
so called, to the history and meaning of which the 
next chapter will be devoted. 

1 Literature and Dogma, pp. 276, 282, by Matthew Arnold. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE apostles' CREED. 

XT maj^ be tliouglit that the expressions in the 
-^ ''Apostles' Creed," '' Conceived of the Holy- 
Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary," refute the 
leading idea of this book ; and it becomes neces- 
sary therefore to notice this sjmibol of faith. An 
account of its origin may be found in various 
ecclesiastical histories, and several distinct trea- 
tises have unfolded its history and explained its 
meaning. The well-known and approved work 
in English, by Sir Peter King, has long been 
before the public; and a more extended and 
thorough publication in French has lately ap- 
peared, entitled " Le Symbole des Ap8tres," by 
Michel Nicolas, Paris, 1867. 

It will occur to every one that there is no al- 
lusion to this Creed in the sermons or epistles of 
the first preachers of Christianity, nor is it named 
by any writer in the earliest ages of the Church. 
Had it been the work of the apostles, it would 



THE APOSTLES' CREED. 155 

often have been appealed to in the sharp con- 
troversies of those times ; nor is this negative 
evidence the only proof that it was composed in 
a later day. 

Not till the end of the third century do we 
meet with any reference to this Creed as having 
the authority of the apostles. Of course, some 
of the articles it embraces had been frequently 
named before as matters of belief. When Philip 
baptized the Eunuch, Acts viii. 37, the latter 
said, '' I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of 
God." This was all the creed the apostle re- 
quired. To that simple profession of faith point 
after point was afterward added, as we shall soon 
see ; but not till about three hundred years after- 
wards were all these points brought together in 
a form that claimed apostolic authority. 

The truth is this Creed is in the main of Roman 
Catholic manufacture. The Greek Church never 
has acknowledged it. Luther said it had no more 
authority than the symbol of St. Ambrose or St. 
Augustine. Calvin thought its origin so late and 
its author so uncertain that it had no special 
value. Zwingle believed there was no copy of it 
prior to the fourth century. Sir Peter King says, 
" Part of this Creed was transmitted down from the 



156 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

apostles, and other parts were afterwards added 
by the governors of the church to prevent here- 
sies." He says also that the first Christians had 
a variety of sj^mbols of faith, which were not 
usually committed to writing, but were trans- 
mitted orally with some feeling of secrecy and 
awe, and were taught to the baptized ; but the 
profession of faith did not take the form in which 
we have it in the Apostles' Creed till centuries 
after Christ. 

The French author we have referred to is en- 
tirely in accord with all this, and says that no 
creed under the name of the apostles can be 
found earlier than the fourth century, and adds 
that St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, is the first 
writer who calls a creed by this name ; that it 
was in Italj^ that this name was first generally 
used ; that the Church in the East long after 
this did not receive this Creed, while the Greek 
Church, as we have before said, does not to this 
day ov/n it. 

It will be more interesting to show how, ac- 
cording both to Sir Peter King and M. Nicolas, ^\ 
the different articles of this Creed came to find 
their place ; and this point will shed still further 
light upon the time of its origin. So far from 



THE APOSTLES' CREED. 157 

being completed at once, it recei\;e(i additions 
generation after generation, to guard against suc- 
cessive heresies. Creseit eundo^ and this is the 
reason why it exceeded in length the true Apos- 
tles' Creed of Philip and the Eunuch. 

Thus the Creed was made to read, '^ I believe 
in one God," not only in opposition to pagan 
polytheism, but, as King shows, against some 
heretical Christians, who, in the third and fourth 
centuries taught that there were two coeval and 
independent principles ; while others propagated 
opinions which bordered on tritheism. The ap- 
proved faith was in one God only. 

It was said " Maker of Heaven and Earth," 
because the Gnostic heresy of the early centuries 
taught that matter Avas not created by God, but 
was the work of some being at war with him, or 
inferior to him. Matter was believed to be the 
source of all impurity, and could not come there- 
fore from the hands of an infinitely holy God. 
But the true doctrine was that God made the 
earth as well as the heaven. 

Nicolas says that the expression, "In Jesus 
Christ our Lord^^ was aimed against those who 
held that a multitu4e of eons emanated from 
God, to whom allegiance was due. This article 



158 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

affirmed Jesus to be the sole revealer of God, and 
Master of Christians. 

The phrase, " conceived by the Holy Ghost," 
was inserted, as both King and Nicolas show, to 
oppose the opinions of the Ebionites, and the 
Judaizing Christians, who believed that Jesus was 
a son of Joseph as well as of Mary. The next 
phrase in the Creed, '' born of the Virgin Mary," 
was directed against those who held that Jesus 
had a corporeal existence only in appearance ; 
that his body was a mere phantom ; had no sub- 
stance derived from his mother. It was out of 
the controversies of the third century, that this 
part of the Creed was shaped ; and here is an- 
other proof of its late formation. 

"- Suffered under Pontius Pilate ; " this was 
placed in the Creed because there were some in 
the second centmy who taught that Christ's body 
was incapable of suffering. " Crucified, dead, and 
buried ; " Nicolas says these expressions are a lit- 
eral repetition of the frequent declarations of Ig- 
natius, Iren^us, TertuUian, and Origen against 
the Docetae. 

"He descended into Hell." By this last word 
was denoted Hades, the place where it was sup- 
posed all departed spirits were confined prior to 



THE APOSTLES' CREED. 159 

the final judgment. Hence in the parable both 
Lazarus and Dives are represented as being there. 
There had been from the first some vague idea 
that the human soul of Jesus visited that place 
between the time of his death and his resurrec- 
tion. To this it is supposed St. Peter alludes, 
1 Peter iii. 19 : '' Went and preached to the spir- 
its in prison." No prominence was given to this 
point till in subsequent centuries it connected it- 
self with two important articles of faith : the first, 
that Jesus had a human soul, in opposition to 
those who denied his perfect humanity ; and the 
second, that Jesus went to the place of departed 
spirits, which was Purgatory, to carry his re- 
deeming work there. 

In our times probably the general opinion at- 
tached to the sentence, " He descended into Hell," 
is that he died ; and the Episcopal Chlurch does 
not impose any interpretation of this phrase. But 
at the time the Creed was formed, in this point 
there was something more meant than a mere 
tautology. King gives the chief prominence to 
the supposition that it was inserted against those 
who thought Christ did not have a human soul ; 
that the Logos took its place. 

From this opinion Nicolas dissents. He says 



160 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

that it could not have been admitted that the 
mere human soul of Christ could carry on the 
work of redemption in the place of departed 
spirits ; and besides, it was held by the Fathers 
that the Divine nature accompanied Christ to 
that place. He therefore sees in this expression 
the recognition of a middle place between earth 
and heaven, Purgatory, where the Saviour went 
to redeem the pious souls who had died in the 
Old Testament ages. Nicolas shows that the be- 
lief in Purgatory took a fresh life from this part 
of the Creed, and has been attached to it ever 
since. 

A like inference may be drawn from the ex- 
pression in the Creed, " The Communion of 
Saints." Protestants see in that clause only a 
recognition of a common feeling among all de- 
vout men. But Nicolas shows that this is by no 
means the idea which presided at its formation, 
and which has been in all past ages attached to 
it. It sets forth, he says, the fact of a unity 
among all redeemed souls, on earth or in heaven ; 
and it is used chiefly to justify the invocation of 
angels and saints, and the very life-blood of the 
clause is found in this idea. 

Looking at the Creed as a whole we see at 



THE APOSTLES' CREED. 161 

once, from its disproportions, that it took its 
shape controversially. Regarded as a full Chris- 
tian Creed it is singularly deficient. Nothing is 
said about the offices, ministrations, and comforts 
of the Holy Spirit. The great subject of God 
the Father is dismissed in a line or two ; while 
controverted points about Christ are brought for- 
ward at greater length. After all, many of the 
important verities of the Christian faith find no 
statement whatever. It is more a polemic weapon 
than an enumeration of the truths which lie deep- 
est in the believer's heart. • 

Bunsen, in his book entitled, '' God in History," 
vol. iii. p. 55, says, " The most ancient formula 
of the Apostles' Creed for which we have docu- 
mentary evidence is that used in the church of 
Alexandria, A. D. 200, the whole of which, word 
for word, is as follows : — 

^' I believe in the only true God, the Father 
Almighty; and in his only begotten Son, Jesus 
Christ, our Lord and Saviour; 

"And in the Holy Ghost, the Giver of life." 

The same writer adds : " It was not until the 

fifth century that the confession of faith used in 

public worship, entitled 'The Apostles' Creed,' 
11 



162 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

grew out of the gradual expansion of this earlier 
baptismal formula." 

Nicolas gives many versions of this Creed in 
the early centuries before it took the final shape 
in which we commonly see it, and then says : — 

'^ Rien ne me semble plus propre a donner une 
idee exacte au long travail auquel le Credo a ^te ' 
soumis avant d'arriver a sa forme definitive, que 
les remaniements successifs de . cet article, re- 
maniements dont il n'est pas tres-difficile de 
suivre presque pas a pas la serie. Les mention- 
ner c'est prouver que notre formulaire a 6t6 
I'oeuvre de plusieurs siecles." Page 86. 

Thus we see that this Creed can rightly be 
called the Apostles' Creed only in that general 
sense in which the college of cardinals is called 
the Apostolic College, or a papal ambassador is 
called an Apostolic Nuncio. It is hardly worth 
while to state how much Roman Catholic tradi- 
tion has glorified the formation of this document, 
representing that, before the apostles left Jeru- 
salem, the twelve came together, and each one 
contributed a sentence, as follows : — 

Peter ^ I believe in God the Father Almighty; 

John^ Maker of Heaven and Earth ; 



THE APOSTLES' CREEDi 163 

James^ And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our 
Lord; 

Andrew^ Conceived of the Holy Ghost, born 
of the Virgin Mary ; 

Philip^ Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was cru- 
cified, dead, and buried ; 

Thomas^ Descended to hell, the third day he 
rose from the dead ; 

Bartholomew^ He ascended to Heaven, he is 
seated at the right hand of God the Father 
Almighty ; 

Matthew^ From thence he shall come to judge 
the quick and the dead ; 

James the Less^ I believe in the Holy Ghost, 
the Holy Catholic Church ; 

Simeon^ The Communion of Saints, the for- 
giveness of sins ; 

Jude^ The resurrection of the body ; 

Matthias^ The life everlasting .^ 

The assignment of sentences to the apostles 
has been variously made. There is an old Latin 
poem, attributed to Saint Bernard, which gives a 

^ We see that Mr. Longfellow has appended the Apostles' 
Creed, with this assignment, to his Divine Tragedy. The fiction 
of the assignment is not without some interest for its antiquity, 
but it was a fraud perpetrated centuries after the apostolic 
age. 



164 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

different distribution, and is in itself of some in- 
terest. Perhaps the omission in it of the miracu- 
lous conception was only through some metrical 
necessity. 

Articuli fidei sunt bis sex corde tenendi, 
Qiios Christi socii docuerunt, pneumati pleni : 
Credo Deum Patrem, Petrus inquit, cuncta creatum; 
Andreas dixit, Ego credo Jesum fore Christum; 
Conceptum, natum, Jacobus; passumque, Joannes; 
Infera, Philippus, f ugit ; Thomas que, revixit ; 
Scendit, Bartholomeus ; veniet censore, Matthceus ; 
Pneuma, Minor Jacobus ; Simon, pcccata remittet ; 
Restituit, Judas, carnem. ; vitamque, Matthias. 

We need not repeat that this picnic origin, 
as one has called it, is a late invention. 

We close this review by marking the fact that 
the first skeletons of the Apostles' Creed do 
not state a belief of anything miraculous in the 
birth of Christ. We have seen that the earliest 
Alexandrian version, quoted above from Bunsen, 
has no clause of this kind. Such is the fact also 
of a sketch of a summary of Christian truths, 
somewhat resembling the Apostles' Creed, found 
in the writings of Ignatius. It speaks of faith 
in " Jesus Christ, w^ho is of the race of David, 
Son of Mary, who was veritably born, has eaten 
and drunk, who has truly suffered persecution 






THE APOSTLES' CREED. 165 

under Pontius Pilate, has been veritably crucified 
and was dead, in the view of all who are in heaven, 
upon the earth, and under the earth, who has 
truly arisen from the dead, his father having 
raised him up as He will raise us up." ^ 

It will be observed that here is a statement of 
that simpler, earlier faith on the subject of the 
birth of Jesus, which, as we have seen, was all 
that the Christians of the first ages professed ; 
and in a creed that has grown up as has the 
Apostles' Creed no statement it contains can be 
brouglit as an argument for or against the faith 
of the first disciples of Christ. 

In support of the general thesis of this book 
there is another subject which merits notice. It 
is the worship of the Virgin Mary, — a worship 
which grew up contemporaneously with the as- 
cription to Jesus of a supernatural origin. The 
next chapter will cast an important side-light on 
the point under discussion. 

1 Le Syrahole des Ap^tres, p. 13. 



CHAPTER X. 

MAEIOLATRY. 

tjlHE adoration of the Mother of Jesus is one 
of the consequences of the misinterpretation 
of the records of his* birth ; and in Roman Cath- 
olic countries her image has taken a hold upon 
the imagination and affections, which arrests our 
attention and merits consideration. 

"It is remarkable," says Lecky, in his " His- 
tory of Morals," "that the Jews, who of the three 
great nations of antiquity certainly produced in 
history and poetry the smallest number of il- 
lustrious women, should have furnished the 
world with its supreme female ideal ; and it is 
also a striking illustration of the qualities which 
prove most attractive in woman, that one of whom 
we know nothing except her gentleness and her 
sorrow, should have exercised a magnetic power 
upon the world, incomparably greater than was 
exercised by the most majestic female patriots of 
Paganism." Vol. ii., p. 389. 



MARIOLATRY. 167 

Archbishop Whately, in tracing the errors of 
Romanism to some principles in hiiman nature, 
might readily have discerned in this worship of 
the Virgin something which made it fondly wel- 
come to the heart. Where the idea of God was 
thrown into a mysterious and awful background, 
and the court of heaven was painted by the 
imagination after the fashion of an earthly court 
of the Middle Ages, and access to the monarch 
was with difficulty obtained, and only abject fear 
and trembling could be felt in his presence, with 
what joy was received the dogma of a gentle and 
loving one to go between the suppliant and that 
King of kings, — one w^ho had all womanly ten- 
derness and pity, into whose ear every sorrow 
and wnsh might be poured, and whose influence 
was all powerful in heaven. 

Her image was set up everywhere, and in Cath- 
olic Europe may still be seen, not only in lofty 
cathedrals, and venerated parish churches, and 
sacred retreats for the dead, but in the corners of 
the streets, in shrines by the wayside, in resting 
places of the mountain paths, on the in closures 
of the vineyards, over the doors of the houses, on 
the walls of the humblest dwelling, in the shop of 
the artisan ; and she of the loving smile, with the 



168 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

infant Jesus in her arms, seen by every one, from 
the first memory of youth to the last look in 
death, became a real being whose existence, and 
compassion, and power it was impossible to doubt. 
God occupied no place in their hearts compared 
with that of Mary.^ 

Of course all this was founded on false concep- 
tions of God. Mariolatry could never have ex- 
isted had men believed what Jesus had taught 
of the Father, who clothes the lilies with their 
beauty, numbers the hairs of our head, and with- 
out whose notice not even a sparrow falls to the 
ground. It is the grand distinction of that Di- 
vine Teacher to present to us in God a being 
whom the heart may love, whom it may approach 
in confidence and joy, and before whom it may 
pour out all its cares, '• for he careth for us." 
But when a false religion has shrouded the throne 
of the Almighty with awful mystery and terror, 
the human heart will make some object to love, 
for to love is one of the necessities of our nature. 



1 The lines of Wordsworth to the Virgin may here be re- 
called : — 

" Thy \eT}- name, Lady, flings 
O'er blooming fields and gushing springs 
A tender sense of shadowy fear, 
And chastening sympathies.-' 



MARIOLATRY. 169 

There has been much speculation as to the 
effect in Roman Catholic countries of the wor- 
ship of the Virgin ; and it has often been said 
that it has elevated the position of woman. We 
think that such an opinion could not have been 
founded on anything the traveler now sees in those 
countries. The position of woman in Protestant 
lands is beyond comparison higher. But after all 
this is not decisive. No one can tell how much 
lower woman might have fallen had she not been 
shielded by some associations of infinite purity 
and holiness wdth her to whom so many prayers 
have been addressed ; and this refuge in all times 
of sorrow and peril to one who was believed to 
be full of gentleness and love, how could it wholly 
fail to do much to soften rugged natures, and to 
teach sweet lessons of pity and forgiveness ? 

Probably the homage given to the Virgin Mary 
would have had a more humanizing influence, and 
would have done more to elevate her sex, had not 
superstition placed her on a pinnacle so far above 
all other women. Her birth was regarded as 
miraculous, for the supposed law of transmitted 
sin was suspended in the case of her who was the 
Queen of Heaven, and the Mother of God ; and 
this accumulation around her of supernatural 



170 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

attributes, how did it make all others of her 
sex appear in comparison ? Her beauty, purity, 
gentleness, and love were something more than 
human, and therefore were no example and meas- 
ure for others, who perhaps were sometimes even 
scorned by the contrast. Who can doubt that 
both Jesus and his mother will have a pro- 
founder influence over human hearts, the closer 
they are brought to our humanity ? 

To show w^hat influence she has had in past 
ages the old legends of thQ church have a special 
interest. The "• Lives of the Saints " are full of 
stories, many of them wild and absurd, but some 
of them singularly beautiful and suggestive of 
the intercessions and helps of the Virgin; and we 
quite agree with what a late writer says, who ex- 
presses himself as follows : — 

" There is, if I mistake not, no department of 
literature the importance of which is more inad- 
equately realized than the '' Lives of the Saints." 
Even when they have no direct historical value, 
they have a moral value of the very highest or- 
der. They may not tell us with acciiracy what 
men did at particular epochs, but they display 
with the utmost vividness what men thought and 
felt, their measure of probability, and their ideal 



MARIOLATRY. 171 

of excellence. Decrees of councils, elaborate 
treatises of theologians, creeds, liturgies, and can- 
ons, are only the husks of religious history. They 
reveal what was professed and argued before the 
world, but not that which was realized in the 
imagination and enshrined in the heart. The 
history of art, which in its ruder day reflected 
with delicate fidelity the fleeting images of an an- 
thropomorphic age, is in this respect invaluable ; 
but still more important is that vast Christian 
mythology which grew up spontaneously from 
the intellectual condition of the time, included 
all its dearest hopes, wishes, ideals, and imagin- 
ings, and constituted during many centuries the 
popular literature of Christendom." ^ 

No English writer, we believe, has looked into 
this mythology so much as Mrs. Jameson, and 
her delightful works on the old church legends 
are an invaluable companion to the visitor of the 
galleries of Europe. Alban Butler's " Lives of 
the Saints " is another storehouse ; but a work 
in Italian, the '' Golden Legend," by Giacobo 
Voragine, is the most famous collection, — a fine 
copy of which, now rarely obtained, fortunately 
rewarded our search in an old bookstore in Flor- 

1 Lecky's History of Morals, vol. ii., p. 119. 



172 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

ence. Later than this a French publication, en- 
titled "Apparitions et Revelations de la Tres- 
Sainte Vierge," by Paul Sausseret, gives us in 
two volumes one hundred and forty legends of 
the Virgin. 

In casting one's eye over this vast mass of me- 
diaRval literature, the first thing that one observes 
is that these legends cover the entire course of the 
Virgin's history, — her Birth, her Presentation 
in the Temple, her Espousal, her Marriage, her 
Conception, the Birth of her Son, the Visit of the 
Magi, the Purification, the Flight into Egypt, the 
Repose in Egypt, the Seeking of Jesus amid the 
Doctors of the Temple, the Marriage at Cana of 
Galilee, Mary at tJie Crucifixion, the Stabat Ma- 
ter,^ ]\Iary at the Descent from the Cross, Marj^ at 
the Entombment, Mary at the Resurrection, her 
Death, her Ascension, her Assumption, her En- 
thronement, and her Coronation. From many of 
these Christian art has drawn the subjects of its 
most renowned works. 

The wonderful variety and expressiveness of 

the titles given to her is also observable. She is 

1 So called from the first line of an old Latin hymn : — 
" Stabat Mater Dolorosa 
Juxta crucem lachrj^mosa 
Dum pendebat filius." 



I 



MARIOLATRY. 173 

the Holy Virgin, the Blessed Virgin, the Immac- 
ulate Virgin, Our Lady of Peace, Our Lady of 
Good Counsel, Our Lady of Sorrow, Our Lady of 
Succor, Our Lady of Good Heart, Our Lady of 
Mercj^, Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Hope, 
Our Lady of Victory, Our Lady of Salvation, Our 
Lady of the Cradle, Our Lady of the Girdle, Our 
Guardian Lady, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our 
Lady of Bethlehem, The Queen of Heaven, The 
Divine Mother, The Mother of Grief, Our Celes- 
tial Empress, and she is addressed by other titles 
more than we can recapitulate. In every con- 
siderable place throughout the Roman Catholic 
world, churches have been consecrated to her, 
and one particular hour every day, the most 
thoughtful and tender hour of all, has been set 
apart for the '' Ave Maria." 

It may be thought that any citation of these 
legends is quite unsuited to the purpose of this 
book, which aims to set forth historical facts and 
logical arguments bearing on the general thesis 
in view, while these church stories take us into 
the region of sentiment and poetry. 

But they show us the state of feeling in which 
originated the popular belief about Christ's 
mother and his birth. Even at the present day 



174 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

dogmas are more the product of emotion than of 
reason. How much more was this the case eight 
and ten centuries ago ! On the points referred to, 
we have inherited a creed from a condition of 
society which has so long since passed away that 
we perhaps find it difficult to reproduce it to our 
imagination ; and it is only by the aid of these 
legends that we can go back to past generations, 
whose wild and fabulous creations still haunt the 
domain of Christian thought. For this reason 
the quotations we propose to make seem germane 
to our design, and may not detract from its inter- 
est. 

In translating, then, from the French and Ital- 
ian, a few of these old legends for our pages, we 
pass by those that are the best known as being 
the motif of famous pictures, and have taken such 
as may suggest the variety of services which it 
was thought the Virgin rendered to her devotees. 
It will be seen that it was believed that she min- 
istered to the humblest forms of human need. 

HOW THE VniGIN HONORED A SERYANT IN THE 
MONASTERY. 

By the pious care of St. Bernard no less than 
eight hundred had been gathered under the 






MARIOLATRY. 175 

shadow of the oaks and cloisters of Clairvaux. It 
was made a valley of milk and honey ; and led 
by him in the way of eternal life, they all had 
one heart to praise and serve God. 

There was with them a menial brother hj the 
name of Didier, a man of the deepest piety, who 
made a special devotion to the Sainted Virgin, 
w^hom he loved with all his heart during the 
whole course of his life. His duty called him to 
pass the night of the Assumption in the forest, 
guarding the sheep of the monastery ; and so he 
could not join in the holy offices in honor of Our 
Lady. But all night long he ceased not to keep 
his thoughts turned to heaven, and to salute the 
Blessed Virgin, adding prayers to prayers, iand 
sighs to sighs. No one won her heart so much 
as he. 

St. Bernard knew all this by express revela- 
tion, and the next day, when the holy mysteries 
of the Assumption had been duly celebrated, he 
addressed the religious in these words : — 

" I do not doubt, my brethren, that you have 
all offered to our most holy Mother the homage 
which is her due, and that you will have as a 
recompense the part which our august and well 
beloved Sovereign will bestow ; but I must in- 



176 THE BIKTH OF JESUS. 

form you that one of the least of our .brethren, 
who, in the forest guarding our flocks, passed all 
the joj^ous night of this grand solemnity, has 
rendered to the Queen of Heaven an homage, 
which no one of you, how^ever great has been his 
devotion, has surpassed in the sight of God and 
our common Mother. Behold what has raised 
him above us all ! " 

And then he related what had been revealed to 
him. And Didier, at his last hour, saw the Queen 
of Heaven come in the midst of a cortege of ce- 
lestial spirits. He heard her call him by name; 
he saluted her ; and she responded with the smile 
of heaven, and received him to the regions of 
eternal peace and joy. 

HOW THE VIRGIN FIIEED A SLAVE. 

There was once a Christian mother whose son 
had been carried off by Mussulman pirates, and 
had long worn the chains of a bitter slavery. She 
had no money to pay his ransom, and no friends 
to, intercede in his behalf ; and in her distress 
she turned entirely and trustingly to Our Lady 
of Sorrow. 

One day, when her prayer had been fervent, 
accompanied by alms and fast, the Holy Virgin 



MARIOLATRY. 177 

appeared and said, '' What do you wish of me ? 
Why these tears and groans?" And the pious 
woman replied, '' Good Lady, restore to me the 
child of my love, now in slavery." And the 
Blessed Virgin said, " Dry up your tears ; you 
shall see your son." 

One day soon after, when the mother of the 
captive was revolving these things in her heart, 
some one knocked at her door. She opened it, 
and what was her surprise and joy when she 
recognized her son. She asked him how he had 
obtained his freedom. And he said, " One night 
the Mother of God came to me, and took the 
irons from my feet and hands and neck, and 
showed me the way to come to your arms." And 
on comparing their accounts it appeared that this 
w^as on the very night when the Holy Virgin 
had promised all this to the mother. 

THE YIRGIN AND THE LEPER. 

In a certain monastery there was a poor lay- 
brother, whom God had sorely afflicted with lep- 
rosy, in order to try him, and that he might lay 
up by patience and resignation a great sum of 
merits. He was sequestered from all intercourse 
with others, and kept in a cell by himself. There 

12 



178 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

succumbing to the might of the hand that was 
upon him, and feeling the utmost discourage- 
ment, he lent an ear to the enemy of all souls, 
and resolved to throw himself at night into a 
river hard by. 

But he had fear of the dogs that guarded the 
place every night as soon as it was dark ; and so 
he bethought himself to defer the execution of 
his plan till Christmas Eve, when no one slept, 
and the dogs were not on watch. Meanwhile his 
disease had so disabled him that he now could 
not walk a step, and hardl}^ could he sustain him- 
self on his feet. Then he tried to drag himself 
to the water, but this he found impossible. 

This poor brother had formerly been a most 
devout worshiper of the Virgin, and in his ex- 
tremity she did not forget him. One night she 
appeared to him, accompanied by many holj^ an- 
gels, and by John, a brother of the monastery. 
She said, in gentle and loving tones, '-'• My son, do 
not neglect the service of God ; and be not cast 
down when he chastises j^ou, for like a Father he 
corrects for their good those whom he loves." 
When the Holy Virgin had thus comforted this 
poor leper with sweet AYords she departed with 
her angel attendants. 






MAEIOLATRY. 179 

Not long after, some one came to ask the leper 
if he was in want of anything, and he asked to 
see Brother John. To him he began to recount 
his vision ; but John said, " I have seen all of 
which you speak ; not with my bodily eyes, but 
with the eyes of my soul ; and the Blessed Virgin 
when she left you went to the choir of monks, to 
witness to these servants of God her satisfaction 
in their chanting the praises of the Most High." 
Then the leper had no doubt that he had indeed 
been favored with a celestial visit from the Di- 
vine Mother, whose loving counsel he followed, 
showing ever after heroic patience and resigna- 
tion, and dying in the most pious and edifying 
manner. 

THE VIRGIN AND THE ARCHITECT. 

In the year 324 the Emperor Constantine, 
among other temples which he consecrated to the 
Virgin, designed one which should be the most 
costly, and most worthy of the Blessed Mother of 
Jesus. So he had enormous columns cut in the 
quarries, and transported to the chosen place. 
But what was his surprise to find that through 
their vast size and length they could not be set 
on end. In vain for a long time they tried to 



180 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

raise them ; all their plans failed, and their labor 
was lost. 

The architect, who was deeply grieved, was 
one night in bed revolving this difficulty. All at 
once the Holy Virgin appeared to him and said, 
" Cease to be sad. I will show you what to do." 
And so she briefly explained what machines and 
ropes were to be used, and then added, " Take 
with you three little children. You will need no 
more; I will give you help." 

When the architect awoke, he recalled his 
dream, and prepared his towers, his cables, his 
pulleys, just as she had prescribed; and calling 
three children from a neighboring school he set 
to work. Wonderfully the columns arose and 
took their appointed place, and crowds of people 
came to see how one man with three little chil- 
dren had done what a thousand arms had in vain 
attempted. 

HOW THE VIRGIN SELECTED A SITE FOR A 
CHURCH. 

In the year 363 the Divine Mother chose to 
give in Rome a mark of her gracious favor and 
to confirm her worship by a prodigy. There was 
then in Rome a powerful and rich Patrician, 



MARIOLATRY. 181 

whose wife had brought him as large an estate as 
he possessed himself. They were equal in rank, 
in the gifts of nature, and the graces of the heart, 
but one joy was wanting. They were childless ; 
and afflicted that they had no heir to their vast 
fortune, they resolved to devote it all to the Ce- 
lestial Mother. 

One night in the month of August, when the 
heats are the greatest in Rome, there fell on the 
Esquiline Hill a quantity of snow, which in the 
morning was seen to cover the ground. That 
same night this Patrician, whose name was John, 
and his wife also, had a dream in which the 
Holy Virgin appeared to both of them, telling 
them to construct a temple to her honor on the 
spot which she would mark with snow. 

Early then the next morning John went and 
recounted the wonderful vision to the Pope, Li-* 
berius, who said that he also had had the same 
revelation. The Pontiff then ordered a proces- 
sion, and clergy and people went with the chant 
of hymns and with lighted torches to the Esqui- 
line Hill. Some say the snow had fallen in lines 
to mark the dimensions of the church. There a 
temple was built at the expense of the Patrician 
John and his virtuous wife. At first the church 



182 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

was known by the name of Nostra Donna Delle 
Neve, Our Lady of the Snow ; but afterwards it 
received the name it bears to this day of Santa 
Maria Maggiore, and is now one of the largest 
basilicas of Rome.^ 

HOW THE VIRGIN PLANNED A BATTLE. 

For sixty years Italy had been the prey of the 
Goths, and Theodoric and Totila, kings of those 
barbarians, had brought that beautiful country 
to a deplorable state. At length the piety and 
good works of the Emperor Justinian mounted to 
the throne of God; and the Queen of Heaven, 
to whom the emperor was specially devoted, had 
pleaded with God and had obtained favor. 

There was at that time in the army of the em- 
peror a general of small stature and feeble consti- 
'tution, but of great valor and of signal piety 
towards the Blessed Mother. One night she ap- 
peared to him and traced the plan of a campaign, 

^ " The whole story of the vision, the snow-storm, and the 
founding of this church, is represented in the mosaics of the 
thirteenth century still on its facade; and the Pope tracing the 
foundations in the snow is the subject elsewhere represented in a 
gilt and silver relief over the altar of the magnificent Borghese 
chapel in the same basilica/' Heman's History of Ancient Sacred 
Art, 



i 




II 



MAEIOLATRY. 183 

and taught him what inarches to make, what 
ambushes to escape, and what positions to fortify- 
In everything he followed her counsels ; and 
when the army of Totila was cut to pieces, in 
563, on the plains of Tuscany, the celestial Queen 
herself was seen, as many testified who were 
there, directing the operations that led to that 

renowned victory. 

t/ 

THE YlRGIISr AND THE MIRACULOUS CANDLE. 

In the year 1095 the village of Arras was smit- 
ten v/ith the plague, which had commenced in 
1089 in Lorraine, and had so much prevailed 
that that year was called the pest year. It en- 
dured for a long time, and depopulated parts of 
France and covered it with grief. 

In this extremity the inhabitants of Arras had 
recourse to the supreme and all powerful consola- 
trice of human sorrow. Processions were made, 
and prayers the most fervent mounted on the 
two wmgs of faith and hope to the throne of the 
Virgin. 

She was not deaf to their supplications. One 
day as the bishop, Lambert, entered the church 
at the head of a great procession, all the people 
saw the Virgin descend from the towers, bearing 



184 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

a miraculous candle, whicli she placed in the 
hands of two, men, who were mortal enemies, and 
whom she thus wished to reconcile with each 
other. They carried it to the bishop, who re- 
ceived it with tears of joy. When it was lighted, 
it burned one hundred years without consuming 
or being extinguished; and water into which 
drops from this candle had fallen was a perfect 
cure of the pest. 

In memory of this a fete Avas established, and 
a rich chapel for the miraculous candle was built. 
Pope Sixtus IV. ordained that an exact narrative 
of the miracle here wrought should be pre- 
pared; and afterwards Pope Clement VIII., by 
a bull in 1597, accorded indulgences to those who 
should visit this chapel in Arras. 

THE VIKGIN AND THE CISTERCIANS. . 

In the year 1113 a monk of the religious order 
of Cistercians, who had a special devotion to the 
Holy Mother, was favored with an ecstasj^ in 
which the heavens w^ere opened to him, and he 
saw the choirs of angels, and the patriarchs, and 
the prophets, and the apostles, and the martyrs, 
and confessors, and various orders of monks, all 
distinguished by their proper emblems. But, 
alas, there was not one of his own order there. 



II 



MARIOLATRY. 185 

With sorrow lie turned to the Divine Empress 
of Heaven and said, '' Why, Holy Virgin, do I 
see none of my order here ? " And the august 
Queen of Hea^ven replied, '' Because the Cister- 
cians to me are so dear, I do not treat them as 
others ; but like to a hen v^ho gathers her brood 
under her wings, I gather the elect whom your 
order hath given to the realm of my Son." With 
these words she opened the ample folds of her 
mantle, and there was an innumerable company 
of saints that had belonged to this order. 

The monk was overwhelmed with joy. He 
gave to the Divine Protectress the most fervent 
thanks ; and when his ecstasy ceased, he related 
the wonderful vision to his Superior. 

HOW THE VIRGIK TREATED THE INCREDULITY 
OF THOMAS. 

When the Blessed Mother ascended to heaven 
in the sight of the apostles, it so happened that 
Thomas was not present with the rest of the 
Twelve, but after three days he returned to them. 
When they related to him the wonderful story of 
her translation, he doubted and said he would not 
believe unless he should find her tomb empty. 
Upon this they showed him the tomb whicli she 



186 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

had left ; and the Holy Virgin, taking pity upon 
him, threw down from heaven her girdle that this 
might remove all doubt from his mind. 

Thus some perhaps natural impediment to a 
believing spirit, so often visited with stern re- 
buke, moved the blessed Mother to tender com- 
passion, and gently won a heart to faith Avhich 
might otherwise have been driven to unbelief. 
In the Florentine Gallery is a charming picture 
by Granacci, representing the Virgin seated on 
the clouds, and surrounded by a choir of angels, 
while beneath her is the empty tomb. Thomas 
is kneeling beside it, and the Virgin drops her 
girdle down into his hand, which he receives with 
grateful joy and reverence. 

HOW THE YIRGIN MARRIED ST. CATHARINE TO 

HER SON. 

Catharine's father was a brother of Constan- 
tine the Great. He died when she was but four- 
teen years of age, and left her with his kingdom, 
heiress of immense wealth. From her infancy 
she had been the wonder of all, for her grace of 
person and gifts of mind ; and when she became 
queen she despised the cares of royal splendor, 
and gave herself to study. 



MARIOLATRY. 187 

The nobles of the country begged that she 
would be pleased to take a husband who should 
assist her in the government of the kingdom, and 
lead forth their armies to war. ^' And what 
manner of man is this that I must marry?" she 
asked. And they said to her : '' You are our 
most sovereign lady and queen, and it is well 
known to all that you possess four most notable 
gifts : the first is, you have the most noble blood 
in the whole world ; the second is, that you are 
the greatest heiress whom we know ; the third 
is, that in science and wisdom you surpass all 
others ; and the fourth is, that in beauty none 
can be compared with you. Wherefore we be- 
seech you that these good gifts, with which the 
great God hath endowed you beyond all creat- 
ures, may move you to take a lord to your hus- 
band w^ho shall be not unworthy of your choice." 

And then the queen said : " If God hath 
wrought so great virtues in us, we are bound to 
love him and to please him ; and he that shall 
be my husband, and the lord of my heart, must 
have also notable gifts : he must be of so noble 
blood that all men shall worship him, and so 
great that I shall never think that I have made 
him king, and so rich that he shall surpass all 



188 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

others in wealtli, and so full of beauty that the 
angels of God shall desire to behold him, and so 
benign that he can gladly forgive all offenses 
done unto him. If you can find me such an one 
I will take him for my husband and the lord of 
my heart." 

Then all her lords and friends looked upon 
each other and said, '* Such an one as she hath 
described there never was and never shall be." 

NoAV the Virgin Mary appeared out of heaven ^ 
and sent a message bj^ a holy hermit to the young 
Queen Catharine, to tell her that the husband she 
desired was the Viroin's Son, who was the Kinof 
of glory, and Lord of all power and might. And 
when Catharine slept, the Blessed Virgin ap- 
peared to her in a dream, accompanied by her 
Divine Son, and with them a noble company of 
saints and angels. And the Lord smiled upon 
her and held out his hand, and plighted his troth 
to her, and put a ring on her finger, and when 
she awoke the ring was there, and thenceforth 
she regarded herself as the betrothed of Christ. 

We must quote no more of these legends, 
though hundreds of them might be given. There 
was no form of sorrow, or trouble, or need, which 



MARIOLATRY. 189 

the Dlyine Mother could not help. No doubt 
some of these tales were as much fictions as, in 
Disraeli's story, was the reported appearance of 
the Virgin to save the life of Lothair ; ^ yet many 

1 " That some of the Christian legends were deliberate forger- 
ies can scarcely be questioned. The principle of pious fraud ap- 
peared to justify this mode of working on the popular mind. It 
was admitted and avowed. To deceive into Christianity was so 
valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself. But the largest por- 
tion was probably the natural birth of that imaginative excitement 
which quickens its day-dreams and nightly visions into reality." 
Milman. 

'' There are other avenues, more trodden than the narrow way 
of reason, by which opinions enter the mind. What impresses the 
imagination, affects the feelings, and is blended with habitual 
association, is received by the generality as true. Fables however 
absurd, conceptions however irrational, even unmeaning forms of 
words, which have been early presented to the mind, and with 
which it has been long conversant, make as vivid an impression 
upon it as realities, and assume their character. No opinions in- 
here more strongly than those about which the reason is not ex- 
ercised ; for they are unassailable by argument. Nor shall we 
find it hard to conceive, nor regard it as a very extraordinary 
fact, that the fables respecting the mother of our Lord and our 
Lord himself have been credited, as well as the doctrine of tran- 
substantiation. Undoubtedly, the world has grown wiser ; or 
rather a small portion of the world has grown Aviser, and we may 
hope the light will become less troubled, steadier, and brighter, 
and spread itself more widely." Norton's Genuineness of the Gos- 
pels, vol. iii., p. 274. 



190 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

of them may have been mostly founded on some ^ 
fact, and grateful and devout imaginations gave 
them the form in which they have come down to 
us. They are the language of wonder, of love 
and joy, of unreasoning and highly wrought exal- 
tation of feeling ; and those who told these stories 
and those who heard them no more thought of 
asking if they were true, than we think of ask- 
ing for the chemical properties of the peach or 
the grape whose flavor we enjoy. These legends 
belonged to an age which will never return, but 
to which they were as much fitted as baby-talk is 
fitted to infancy, and as our stammering intellect- 
ualism is fitted to the age in which we live ; and 
of two things we hardly know which is the most 
absurd, to criticise them according to our modern 
ideas, or to insist that we shall now believe them 
just as they were believed a few centuries ago. 

A few centuries ago ! How strange it seems 
tha.t we stand so near the time when they were 
the intellectual and spiritual nourishment of our 
ancestors ! The Reformation has banished them 
from our sympathies and afiEections as much, as 
Mrs. Jameson very justly says, ''as if they were 
antecedent to the fall of Babylon, or related to 
the religion of Zoroaster." But the purpose for 



II 



MARIOLATRY. 191 

which we have quoted them will not be over- 
looked. It has been to show how much they 
served to fix deeply in the convictions and hearts 
of the people these misinterpretations which made 
Mary the Mother of God. 

The subject of the '' Immaculate Conception " 
connects itself here with our general topic. It is 
easy to see the sort of reasoning which led to 
that dogma. After the seventh century it was 
said, if Mary be the Mother of God, she must 
have been a pure shrine for his dwelling; and 
therefore must have been free both from original 
and acquired sinfulness, '' It was argued," as 
Mrs. Jameson says, " that God never suffered any 
temple of his to be profaned : he had even pro- 
mulgated severe ordinances to preserve his sanct- 
uary inviolate. How much more to him was 
that temple, that tabernacle built by no human 
hands, in which he had condescended to dwell I 
Nothing was impossible to God ; it lay therefore 
in his power to cause his Mother to come abso- 
lutely pure and immaculate into the world. Be- 
ing in his power, could any earnest worshiper of 
the Virgin for a moment suppose that for one so 
favored it would not be done." Did not the Song, 
of Solomon say, in a text which Romish theolo- 



192 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

gians applied to the Virgin, " Thou art all fair, 
my love ; there is no spot in thee " ? Canticles 
iv. 7. 

Yet St. Thomas Aquinas said, '' If Mary was 
conceived without sin, then she does not need the 
redemption of Christ." And St. Bonaventura 
said, " We ought to beware lest by the honor 
we ascribe to the Mother, we derogate from the 
glory of the Son, and to remember that the Crea- 
tor stands higher than any creature. We could 
by no means aflfirm, Avithout impiety, that the 
Holy Virgin had no need of redemption." 

But in time this difficulty was adroitly avoided. 
The hypothesis was framed that Jesus freed his 
mother from sin beforehand, so that she no longer 
stood in need of the general redemption. 

For several centuries, however, there was a 
sharp discussion on this point, and the Francis- 
cans and Dominicans were divided iii opinion. 
x\t length Sixtus IV., who had been a Francis- 
can, issued a papal decree in favor of the dogma. 
A form of service was composed, in 1496, for the 
festival of the Conception. But this was not for- 
mally instituted until 1617, when Paul V. issued 
a bull forbidding any one to teach and preach 
against the Immaculate Conception. This was 



MARIOLATRY. 193 

received in Spain particularly, where the Fran- 
ciscans were held in great esteem, and where no 
less than one hundred and fifty books had been 
written on the subject, in a frenzy of religious 
joy; and tournaments, bull-fights, and banquets 
attested the triumph of the votaries of the Virgin. 
The exact definition of this dogma as an article 
of faith was not authoritatively given until 1854, 
when Pio Nono assembled three hundred prelates 
at Rome, and decreed with great pomp in St. Pe- 
ter's, " That the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the 
first instant of her conception, was preserved free 
from all stain of original sin by the singular grace 
and privilege of Almighty God, and through the 
merits of Jesus Christ." A tasteless monument 
in memory of this event was erected in 1857, in 
the Piazza di Spagna at Rome, the monument we 
have before referred to, and large marble tablets, 
recording the names of those who assisted at this 
decree, have been ostentatiously placed in the 
chancel of St. Peter's. 

13 



CHAPTER XL 

CONCLUSION. 

r J1HE point we have been discussing in this 
-^ volume does not relate to an abstract sub- 
ject of no practical importance. It intimately 
concerns our mode of conceiving of the Master of 
Christians, and our ability to understand and 
love him. The prevailing views push him aside 
into a region of mystery and shadows, and make 
him a mythical demi-god. They take away our 
revered Elder Brother, " and we know not where 
they have laid him." It seems as if in sorrowful 
tones we hear him say, '' Have I been so long time 
with you and yet hast thou not known me ? " 

On the other hand, if we think of him as born 
of human parents, tempted in all respects as we 
are, receiving, as his intellectual and spiritual 
nature unfolded, a supply of God's illuminating 
grace which has distinguished him from every 
other being on earth, we have a view not only in 
harmony with the Scriptures, but intelligible to 



CONCLUSION. 195 

our understanding, and welcome to our heart. 
This makes Jesns, what he so often called him- 
self, the Son of Man, but no less the Son of God. 
In their anxiety to mark something super- 
human in Jesus, theologians, as it seems to us, 
have applied to his body expressions which are 
true only of his soul. Thus Neander says on the 
subject of the miraculous conception : " If we con- 
ceive the manifestation of Christ to have been a 
supernatural communication of the Divine nature 
for the moral renewal of man, this conception 
itself, apart from any historical accounts, would 
lead us to form some notion of the beginning of 
his humble life that would harmonize with it. 
He entered into history not as a part of its off- 
spring but as a higher element. Whatever has 
its origin in the natural course of humanity must 
bear the stamp of humanity, and share in the 
sinfulness that stains it. It was impossible that 
the second Adam, the Divine progenitor of a new 
and heavenly race, could derive his origin from 
the first Adam, in the ordinary course of nature. 
And so our own idea of Christ compels us to ad- 
mit that two factors, the one natural, and the 
other supernatural, were coefficient in his en- 
trance into human life ; and this too although we 



196 



THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 



maybe unable a priorito state how that entrance 
was accomplished." ^ 

But if in order to have a sinless being it be 
necessary that his body should be removed from 
the idea of earthly parentage, the argument re- 
quires that the mother should have no share in 
its production. 

We admit that Jesus was above " the ordinary 
course of humanity," was a '' communication of 
the Divine nature for the moral renewal of man ; " 
but what has this to do with the origin of his 
hody? The Divine nature entered into history 
as a higher element through Christ's soul; and so 
we recognize the two factors, the human organi- 
zation and the divine illumination ; but no proof 
is offered to show that the latter cannot have con- 
nection with the former ; and who are we who 
talk about the " impossibility " of this? Such a 
connection is confessed if the mother had any 
share in the formation of the body of Jesus. 

Olshausen follows in the same strain. Argu- 
ing for the miraculous birth he says : '' If we rec- 
ognize in Christ an actual incarnation of the 
Word of God, then the narration of his super- 
natural generation, so far from astonishing us, 

1 Life of Christ. 



CONCLUSION. 197 

seems for the Saviour specially natural and befit- 
ting. The very idea of a Saviour requires that in 
him there should be manifested somethino; hio^her, 
something heavenly, that cannot be derived from 
what exists in human nature." 

Yes, we see in Jesus '' something higher, some- 
thing heavenly," and above ordinary human nat- 
ure. But all this belonged to his soul. What 
kind of a body shall we attribute to Jesus if not 
a human body ? 

This inherited corruption of man's nature to 
which both Neander and Olshausen refer, and 
on which countless other writers so much insist — 
the dogma which has been age after age handed 
down in the Romish and Evangelical churches — 
who can refrain from asking, What is it? What 
does ifc amount to? Is it a deeply fixed stain, 
ineffaceable except by miracle ? Have these 
churches really believed that it can be cut off 
only by supernatural means ? 

Every reader knows that these churches have 
not believed this. They have held that the trans- 
mitted stain, whatever it was, could be removed 
in the easiest mode in the world. Baptismal re- 
generation, as they teach, puts it all away. The 
corruption of Adam, original sin, is abolished by 



198 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

the water of baptism. So that now a priest can 
any day do what God could not do except by a 
stupendous departure frDm the laws of Nature. 

In a different school of thought from the above- 
named writers, we find Professor Norton arguing 
for the miraculous conception in the following 
manner: "Nothing could have served more ef- 
fectually to relieve Jesus from that interposition 
and embarrassment in the performance of his 
high mission, to which he would have been ex- 
posed on the part of his parents if born in the 
common course of nature. It took him from their 
control, and made them feel that in regard to him 
they were not to interfere with the purposes of 
God." 

Perhaps the reader will think, as we do, that 
this is finding reasons for a previous conclusion. 
It often happens in such cases that the reasons 
do not tally with the facts. There is no evidence 
to sliow that Jesus was in the least taken from 
the control of his parents ; or that anything oc- 
curred in regard to his birth to impress his family 
circle with feelings of awe. On the other hand 
we are told that '^ his brethren did not believe in 
him," John vii. 6 ; and even thought him mad, 
Mark iii. 21. 



CONCLUSION. 199 

In view of some historical notices, in a former 
chapter, of sacerdotal celibacy, the remark of 
Milman, defending the miraculous conception, 
'' that it has consecrated sexual purity," seems 
amazing. In order to remove all thoughts of 
Christ's birth from the circle of nature, ten thou- 
sand engines for centuries have played their dirty 
streams upon the relation of the sexes, and in- 
stead of consecrating its purity seem rather to 
have covered it with filth. 

We find another opinion of Milman which we 
quote wdth more satisfaction. In referring to 
what he calls "the poetical and imaginative in- 
cidents of the birth of Christ," he very justly 
ascribes to them a vast influence over the thoughts 
and affections of mankind. '' This language of 
poetic incident, and, if I may so speak, of imag- 
ery, interwoven as it was with the popular belief, 
infused into the hymns, the services, the cere- 
monial of the Church, introduced in material 
representation by painting and sculj)ture, has 
become the vernacular tongue of Christendom, 
universally intelligible, and responded to by the 
human heart throughout these many centuries." 

No doubt this is true ; and we may well be 
thankful for it ; and be glad that this language of 



200 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

poetic imagery is long to hold its influence over 
the human heart. It will be an influence all the 
greater when we see it as the language of poetry, 
and no strange questioning of what it means, and 
dim shadows of prodigious and incredible things, 
shall perplex and darken the mind. 

So also in our arguments with unbelievers what 
a help it will be to shut off all objections natu- 
rally and inevitably arising from the misinterpre- 
tation of the records of the birth of Jesus, and 
to feel no longer bound to defend the traditions 
which originated hundreds of years after that 
event. We shall not then think of proving 
Christ's divinity by such arguments as the vir- 
ginity of Mary and the continence of Joseph. 

Moreover, w^hat a satisfaction it will be to 
know that we can trace the footsteps of our re- 
ligious faith quite back to the simplicity of the 
first preachers of the Gospel. Nothing is clearer 
than that much of our theological diction origin- 
ated in those muddled politico-dialectic disputes 
of the fourth and fifth centuries. Language is 
a record which nothing can falsify. Two thou- 
sand years hence an historian, meeting in old 
books the first words about railroads, will know 
that those expressions originated in the first haK 



CONCLUSION. 201 

of tlie nineteentli century, and were entirelj^ un- 
known before. With a like certainty we know 
where much of our reh'gious terminology came 
from, and are sure it does not come from the 
Gospels, nor from the writings of the apostles. 

No one who has read Macaulay's review of 
Ranke's " History of the Popes " will forget the 
few striking paragraphs which show that in Eu- 
rope Protestantism has made no geographical ad- 
vances since the first impulse of the Reformation, 
while Catholicism has regained some of the ground 
it then lost. With equal truth it may be said that 
theology has made hardly any progress since the 
first fresh days of the Reformers, while many of 
the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church have 
been more strongly intrenched in the very bosom 
of Protestantism. We have continued to drink 
the water of life, not as it flowed direct from the 
Divine fountain which God opened for our heal- 
ing, but as it has trickled through turbid papal 
channels. Perhaps it will one day be seen that 
in order to get into the true current of apostol- 
ical descent, we must go back to a time before a 
corrupt side-stream from Egypt, by fraud and 
violence, flooded the Church of Christ.^ 

^ " It cannot be regarded as a strange event that, at a time 



202 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

In looking back to the epoch which succeeded 
that of the apostles, it is only too evident that it 
was marked by a constant degeneracy both in in- 
telligence and spirituality. The lofty mind and 
the great soul of Jesus lifted up all who had per- 
sonally known him. His inspiring influence to a 
large degree survived through a few following gen- 
erations. But wdth the lapse of time it \vas much 
weakened. This is the general effect of the with- 
drawal of a great mental and spiritual guide. The 
reaction is usually proportioned to his superiority. 

When, then, we come down to the fourth cent- 
ury, and the immediately subsequent centuries, 
the men we meet in history are wddely different 
from Paul, and Peter, and John. Indeed, what 
a contrast ! Petty questions, petty subtleties, 
petty superstitions, petty strifes, are now the 
rage. Who can imagine the apostles going forth 
on their missionary journeys as carrying with 
them a splinter of the true cross, a thorn from 

when most believers could not read, tradition should acquire an 
authority above the real record of the Gospel ; and of tradition it 
has been justly said that it is like the parasite plant which at 
first clings to and rests on the tree, which it gradually over- 
spreads with its own foliage, till little by little it weakens and 
completely smothers it." Whately's Kingdom of Heaven, Phil- 
adelphia edit., p. 53. 



CONCLUSION. 203 

the bloody crown, a thread from the seamless 
garment, a paring from one of the finger-nails on 
the pierced hands ? When men had lost an abil- 
ity to comprehend the real significance of what 
Jesus had taught, these superstitious and per- 
haps counterfeit relics became everything. 

At that time, too, a syllable more or less would 
kindle fury, and make multitudes fly to arms. 
On an insignificant question about a formula, ex- 
communication and banishment were suspended. 
There was a race of narrow minds and hard 
hearts. The tide of Christian intelligence and 
Christian virtue hardly ever ebbed lower than 
with them. Yet they gave a shape to the Gospel 
which not only the Catholic but the Protestant 
world has accepted as its clearest and final word. 
If human authority be needed to interpret and 
verify Christianity, how astounding that we should 
look for it among the ambitious and corrupt pet- 
tifoggers of the epoch referred to. 

The times in which we live seem favorable in 
one respect for important reforms in theology. 
It would be absurd to found many hopes on any 
one sect, for none has a monopoly of this work. 
The best encouragement is in the large number 
of generous-minded and scholarly men of all 



204 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

denominations who feel uneasy under sectarian 
restraints, and long to see eye to eye those with 
. whom they know they have a spiritual alliance. 
Probably there has never been a day when this 
number was larger than now. 

Still the bondage of sect is wide-spread, and 
often overwhelming. One might be surprised to 
count up the number and power of material inter- 
ests that are pledged to some old creed. Funds, 
churches, periodicals, theological schools, count- 
less religions and social organizations, partisan 
leadership, hopes of advancement, means of daily 
bread — all are at stake, in numberless cases, 
upon the retention of certain formulas of faith. 
The sermons, the habits of thought, the exhorta- 
tions, the gestures, the roll of the eye, the shake 
of the head, of thousands of preachers are ad- 
justed to a certain belief ; and to overthrow that 
is to take aAvay their stock in trade. Theological 
schools seem to answer the end of camp-life to 
raw soldiers, that is, to break down the will of 
many to the command of a few ; and so it is that 
we go on repeating from generation to generation 
the same old rattling and hollow forms, and all 
improvement in theology has a hard fight against 
these resisting forces. 



I! 



CONCLUSION. 205 

It would denote extreme verdancy to suppose 
that any churches are now formed to encourage 
higher conceptions of truth. Who does not 
know that their corporate strength is alwaj^s 
given to the defense or diffusion of a precon- 
ceived creed ? Hence Dr. Arnold of Rugby said, 
'' In the great end of a church all churches are 
now greatly deficient. The life of these societies 
has long been gone. They do not help the 
individual in holiness. This in itseK is evil 
enough; but it is monstrous that they should 
pretend to fetter where they do not assist." ^ 

It will not be strange if it should be said by 
some that it is the design of this book to lower 
our idea of Jesus, and to reduce him to the 
measure of our humanity. We feel sure that no 
one who reads this work would willingly bear 
false witness. Our design is very far from that 
here named. We think that we have the highest 
idea of his person. In his life we recognize the 
advent of a new spirit, a new power, into the 
world, coming direct from God. Yet we believe 
it works in an organic connection with the nat- 
ural, so* that while the chain of cause and effect 
is not broken, a higher influence mingles in the 

1 Life of Dr. Arnold, vol. ii., p. 57. 



206 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 

links of that chain, and operates in the circle of 
human instrumentality. And we hold to this 
view, and commend it to others, because it seems 
to bring us nearer to our Divine Teacher and 
Guide. 

If we look to other branches of inquiry, how 
plainly we see the need of fresh, independent in- 
vestigation to emancipate us from long inherited 
errors. The other day, as we were turning over 
the leaves of a book relating to the history of med- 
ical opinions, we were astonished at the ground- 
less theories, the puerile absurdities, the supersti- 
tious nostrums^ that had long been handed down 
from the dark ages, and implicitly adopted, gen- 
eration after generation, as the substance of ther- 
apeutic science. This enormous mass of error 
has almost tempted some eminent medical writers 
to wish that all traditional maxims and remedies 
could be annihilated, so that there might be a 
fresh study of each case. 

This is the fact where the point to be inves- 
tigated touches our external senses, and requires 
for its successful prosecution only good eyes, 
good ears, and unbiased, trained habits of care- 
ful discrimination. How incredible, then, to 
suppose there have been no inherited errors in 



I 



CONCLUSION. 207 

a sphere of thought above our external senses, 
in the science of theology, in dogmas framed in 
times of gross ignorance, and transmitted from 
father to son unaltered for ten or fifteen cent- 
uries. 

A spirit of investigation, which has recon- 
structed all other branches of knowledge, will 
some time break up the petrified crusts of the- 
ology. A silent change is even now going on, 
far more deep and fundamental than the great 
revolution which we call the Protestant Reforma- 
tion, and which, if it were allied, as then, to 
questions of dynasties and state interests, would 
produce even greater convulsions. Thinking men 
everywhere see that there must be a readjust- 
ment of our ideas of God, of Christ, of the 
Bible, in order to bring them into truer relations 
with the advancement of the age. 

We have failed altogether in the object kept 
in view in this book if the mind of the reader 
be not impressed with a sense of the wrong 
which the ages have inflicted upon Jesus. Of 
course they have sought to honor him, but it 
was been in a way which he would have for- 
bidden. High sounding titles have shut him out 
of the sphere of human sympathies. His mur- 



208 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 

derers mockingly said, '' Hail, King of the Jews ! " 
in after times his friends sincerely applied to him 
like inflated ejDithets ; bat the effect was in both 
cases the same — to alienate from him hmnan 
affections. 

And to whom were these estranging phrases 
applied? It was to him who loved man most 
tenderly, who came closer to the hnman heart 
than any other soul known on earth, whose 
chosen title was Son of Man^ who declared that 
the humblest child who did the wdll of God was 
his mother and sister and brother. Such was he 
who has been lifted up on a pedestal above our 
clear vision, has been surrounded by mists and 
clouds, and has been made the object of a con- 
ventional adulation instead of a natural love. 

If we have any right sympathy with the mind 
of Jesus, we must see that he would have infi- 
nitely preferred that love. The world has de- 
frauded him. We have defrauded ourselves, also, 
of a mighty aid. Fellowship with such a lofty 
human soul is one of the most quickening helps 
to draw us up to his transcendent height. • 

No doubt for the humanity of Jesus the early 
Christians had a sympathy wdiich, with those 
who succeeded them, was weakened and nearly 



CONCLUSION. 209 

lost. To be convinced of this we have only 
to mark the way in which the first disciples 
spoke of him. Whom did St. Peter preach on 
the day of Pentecost ? " Jesus of Nazareth, a 
man approved of God." Acts ii. 22. Whom 
did St. Paul declare to be the one Mediator be- 
tween God and man ? " The man Christ Jesus." 
1 Timothy ii. 5. Whom did St. Paul say God 
had sent into the world ? " His son, made of a 
woman." Galatians iv. 4. By whom came, ac- 
cording to St. Paul, the sure hope of a future 
life ? '' By man came the resurrection from the 
dead." 1 Corinthians xv. 21. In his memorable 
speech at Athens, whom did St. Paul announce 
as assisting at the judgment of the last day ? 
" God Avill judge the world in righteousness by 
that man whom he hath ordained." ^Acts xvii. 
31. In his sermon at Antioch of Pisidia St. Paul 
preached the forgiveness of sins ; but through 
whom ? '' Be it known unto you, men and breth- 
ren, that through this man is preached forgive- 
ness of sins." Acts xiii. 38. And, finally, when 
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews set forth 
the true and acceptable offering, in what terms 
did he allude to Jesus ? " This man, after he 

14 



210 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 

had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down 
on the right hand of God." Hebrews x. 12. 

Thus it was the manhood of Jesus to which 
constant reference was made — a humanity with 
which they could sympathize, while they rejoiced 
that our human nature was made the vehicle of 
God's grace, and was the antetype and prophecy 
of what man, in some future age, was to be- 
come. 

But this style of speaking of Jesus soon ceased. 
We find nothing like it in all the literature that 
succeeded, apostolic times. • Then came the exe- 
gesis, still in vogue, of two natures, between 
which, it was supposed, Jesus and his apostles 
prevaricated. Men's hearts were thus turned 
away from an earnest love of a brother to empty 
boasts of a demi-god. What a confirmation is 
here of the leading view of this book ! 

On all sides we hear complaints of prevailing 
indifference to the great themes which in other 
times have most profoundly moved the human 
mind. Is no part of this indifference attribu- 
table to the divorce between modern intelligence 
and an outgrown theology? To what length 
may the antagonism extend ? Is not a higher 
plane of free and thorough criticism one of the 



CONCLUSION. ' 211 

great needs of our times ? Are there not many 
subjects which should be brought before the bar 
of a criticism like that ? Is not here the rem- 
edy for existing and menacing evils ? Aware 
of many imperfections in the work which we 
here close, and not doubting but that in some 
points we may have made mistakes, we are yet 
conscious that it has been written in the interest 
of a true religion, — of a profound reverence for 
its verities and hopes. 



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